September 2018 – upcoming London folk gigs – Nest Collective’s Campfire Club shows, part 2 – Jim Causley and Saskia Maxwell (15th September); The Hut People and Danny Peddler & Rosie Butler-Hall (21st September); Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow and Jake Morley (28th September)

13 Sep

Here’s the second batch of September gigs in Nest Collective‘s Campfire Club shows in the open air in London parks, gardens, playgrounds…

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The 15th September gig features Jim Causley and Saskia Maxwell.

“Since the release of his debut album in 2005, Jim Causley’s unique voice and persona have helped him become one of the most well-loved and respected figures of today’s contemporary roots and folk scene. He’s won numerous accolades (including no less than six nominations for a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award and the title of “finest singer of his generation” from ‘Mojo’), presented his own folk music show on BBC Radio Devon. in 2015 he worked with BBC TV historian Dr Sam Willis to create the music for his show ‘Highwaymen, Outlaws and Villains’; In 2017 Jim composed the entire soundtrack for Cornish filmmaker Jane Darke’s BBC4 biographical film about his relative, the poet Charles Causley.

“A prolific collaborator, Jim is hugely admired for his work with iconic groups The Devil’s Interval and Mawkin:Causley as well as playing, touring and recording alongside Waterson:Carthy, John McCusker, Eddie Reader, Graham Coxson, Shirley Collins, Michael Morpurgo, Show of Hands, Kate Rusby, David Rotheray (of Beautiful South fame) and many more.

 
“Saskia Maxwell is a singer-songwriter, guitarist and flautist who hails from Cornwall. Born into a musical family (and inspired by bands like Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins), she has always been surrounded by music and was classically trained on guitar, flute and piano from an early age. She has gigged extensively, performing over six hundred shows and festivals in the UK alone and supporting the likes of Ralph McTell, Rae Morris, JP Cooper, Nick Harper and Rachel Sermanni.

“Whilst her first three EPs encompassed soulful jazz styles and exuberant folk songs, her more recent performances display a new-found purpose and grace and are suggestive of a move towards a more otherworldly and ethereal folk style. Her new songs are explorative of many moods and perspectives that share a common purpose of being spiritually provocative and invigorating/ A full debut album, ‘Entertaining Possibilities’ is coming soon.”

https://youtu.be/xmH2xEPIfK4
 
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The 21st September gig features The Hut People and Danny Peddler & Rosie Butler-Hall.

“This is a show like nothing you’ve ever seen before – expect feel-good dancing tunes, audience participation, step dancing, Quebecois foot-percussion (whilst playing the accordion!) and humour aplenty. Taking the audience on a musical journey around the world, English instrumental duo The Hut People (Sam Pirt and Gary Hammond) have firmly established themselves as one of the best loved, entertaining and best-loved acts on the UK folk scene today.

“Mixing global rhythms with folk tunes from Quebec to Spain, Scandinavia to Sussex and everywhere in between, this is a quirky celebration of our rich musical heritage – and it works so well!

 
“Danny Pedler & Rosie Butler-Hall are two young and dynamic musicians who formed as a duo in late 2011. Danny (from Essex) plays hurdy-gurdy and accordion, and Rosie (from Wiltshire) plays five-string fiddle and sings. They play mostly English and French songs and tunes and enjoy a close relationship with the audience at our live gigs. Their music is characterised by flowing melodies, intricate harmonies and strong rhythms while keeping the flavour of the traditional style.”

https://youtu.be/hVDDsuC5oWE
 
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The last September gig, on the 28th, features Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow and Jake Morley.

“Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow are a Bristol-based duo playing acoustic, folk and roots music. They’ve worked with many artists including Seth Lakeman, Afro Celt Sound system, Yola Carter, Mad Dog Mcrea, Sheelanagig and Roni Size (to name a few) but what unites them is a passion for folk music. They draw on their many influences to created unique arrangements of traditional song and tunes, as well as their own compositions.

“Kit and Aaron’s debut album ‘The Fox’ explores the relationship between fiddle, guitar and voice, using the fertile ground of the traditional music of the British Isles as its starting point. The product of decades of musical experience, it combines self penned tunes and folk tales, all intricately arranged and heartfelt. The live show is a musical journey through Europe and beyond; combining dazzling playing with a fine sense of musicality and showmanship.

 
“Having played over four hundred gigs in the past few years, it’s hardly surprising that Jake Morley has been invited to share the stage with many leading lights of modern English songwriting such as Ed Sheeran, Ben Howard and Lucy Rose. Seriously captivating live, his groundbreaking and unusual lap-tapping guitar techniques are just an accompaniment to his true passion for words and ideas and their power to connect.

“His most recent album, ‘The Manual’ – produced and mixed by Calum Malcolm (The Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout) – was released in summer 2016 to stunning reviews: his sound now developed and matured whilst maintaining its unique directness and his capacity for strong hooks and big tunes, with the addition of stunning string arrangements by Kate St John (Dream Academy, Van Morrison) bringing a deeper dimension to the sound.”

 
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Full dates:

  • Campfire Club: Jim Causley + Saskia Maxwell – Phytology, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, Middleton Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9RR, England, Saturday 15th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: The Hut People + Danny Peddler & Rosie Butler-Hall – Lumpy Hill Adventure Playground, 15 Market Road, Lower Holloway, London, N7 9PL, England, Friday 21st September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Kit Hawes & Aaron Catlow + Jake Morley – Oasis Nature Garden, Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, London, SW4 6RJ, England, Friday 28th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

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September 2018 – upcoming London acoustic gigs – One Voice, One Cello And A Mad Belgian (14th, 19th, 23rd, 28th September); Alice Zawadzki & Alice Purton (21st September)

10 Sep

Some sparky shows in little London locations…

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This month, Rupert Gillett and Jennifer El Gammal relaunch their new collaboration as One Voice, One Cello And A Mad Belgian onto the live stage with a brace of London gigs, following their debut gig in Stoke Newington back in August.

Rupert is the cellist: a sharp-dressed, cheerful and irreverent diversifier who uses the instrument to explore jazz, rock, folk, pop and various other genres… anything as long as it isn’t classical. Projects he’s involved with have included Dai & The Ramblers and the London Klezmer Quartet and his own Many Celli orchestra. As part of all this, he’s an established improviser and occasional radio/television performer: in addition, he’s an offbeat singer-songwriter whose subject matter spans “aliens, robots, space invaders, murderous bogeymen, mathematics, life after death, fairy godfathers, war, peace, love, death, taxation and other serious issues of the day”. Notably for a contemporary solo performer, Rupert eschews loops and effects. When you hear him live, it’s just him, the necessary techniques and a dose of imagination.

Jennifer (the titular Mad Belgian) is many things – her website lists “writer, comedian, sociologist, tour guide and magician”, and she’s a former theatre performer – but as a musician and master improviser she specialises in soprano saxophone and melodeon as well as singing, playing with modern jazz trio Uživati, folk band Virevoltes and solo under the Mad Belgian monicker. She defines the dreamier, more eccentric end of the Fripp-defined “small, mobile, intelligent unit”, travelling with her instruments on a fold-up bicycle to creates “strange and wonderful musical sculptures” and “jazzy and melodic excursions”.

This is what they get up to, separately and together.

 
Dates here, all of them free or pay-what-you-like:

  • Babel ART House, 86 Stoke Newington High Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 7PA, England, Friday 14th September 2018, 8.00pm – free entry – information here
  • Spit and Sawdust, 21 Bartholomew Street, Newington, London, SE1 4AL England, Wednesday 19th September 2018, 8.00pm – pay-what-you-like event – information here
  • The Spice of Life, 6 Moor Street, Soho, London, WC1 5NA, England, Sunday 23rd September 2018, 8.00pm (part of the ‘Secret Rapture’ gig with Daniel Paul Baxter, Henry Grace and Nick Ereaut) – pay-what-you-like event – information here
  • Luna Lounge, 7 Church Lane, Leytonstone, London, E11 1HG, England, Friday 28th September 2018, 8.00pm (with The Islas and The Blue Spiders) – pay-what-you-like event – information here

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Also this month – vocal music showcase label La La La Records are starting up the Pindrop Sessions, a series of acoustic/unplugged music shows at the Brixton Pound Cafe. First up in the series is a duo gig by a pair of longstanding collaborators – a tale of two Alices.

An inspiring blend of folk-culture conduit, benevolent diva, teacher, scholar and benefactress, singer and violinist Alice Zawadzki is a tireless musician and a warm, charismatic, enthralling performer. Almost ceaselessly active (which explains why she shows up in here so often), she moves purposefully between jazz songs, Jewish music (among other things, she’s a member of stunning Sephardic fusion ensemble Sefiroth), her own themed concerts, Joni Mitchell interpretations, film scores, string/vocals classical solo spots and much more (including a host of social programmes including teenaged-refugee support scheme Play For Progress). She also manages to be a young British national treasure with a firm international perspective; and never seems to look tired, either. How she packs it all into one life, I’ll never know.

 
Alice Purton, meanwhile, has been making her name as a leading young contemporary music cellist. An active member of diverse-minded ensemble Distractfold, the Plus Minus Ensemble, the Chagall Piano Quartet and Trio Artem, she’s involved in the regular performance and commissioning of new work while dipping deep into existing repertoire. Amongst other collaborations, she and Alice Z have previously worked together on the latter’s ‘Songs About The Moon’ concert and in the Cello Songs trio (which also features fellow cellist/Team Zawadzki member Shirley Smart).

There’s not too much of Alice P on the web at the moment, but here’s her playing in two trios – one performing Charlie Sdraulig’s voice/cello/shakuhachi piece ‘close’ back in 2012 and the second one also featuring Alice Z and guitarist Alex Roth, performing Alex’s trio piece ‘After’ in London last year.

 

Together, the two Alices will “weave together the intimate sonorities of cello and violin to create an unusual bed for their rich voices, in a program of soulful songs ranging from European folk to jazz to re-imagined pop.” This is likely to be a well-attended gig and the Pound Cafe’s a cosy space, so make sure you book a space by email before coming down.

La La La Records present:
Pindrop Sessions – Alice Zawadzki & Alice Purton
The Brixton Pound, 77 Atlantic Road, Brixton, London, SW9 8PU, England
Friday 21st September 2018, 7.30pm – information here (email to reserve your place)
 

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September 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – Rumour Cubes, Agathe Max and Dream Logic in London (14th September); Major Parkinson’s European autumn tour (various dates, 26th September to 6th October)

9 Sep

Rumour Cubes + Agathe Max + Dream Logic, 14th September 2018

Like progressive rock before it, post-rock ended up disappointingly short of genuinely inspiring exponents. The blueprint was all very well: retaining rock’s technology and what remained of its countercultural drive while dissolving its rigid methods, its predictable narratives and textures and its conservative exclusions In practise, few could reach (or be bothered to reach) the heights of the movement’s most inspired figures and their new paths: such as Tortoise’s integration of jazz, dub and electronica; Slint’s taut, grinding refusals; Godspeed’s sprawling/brooding scapes of punk-cinema-versus-conservatoire-grandeur; Talk Talk’s mendicant, increasingly hermetic passage from synth-pop to a dissolution of blues, prog and folk into distressed noise and silence; Moonshake’s abrasive post-everything groove and careening samples; Disco Inferno’s angst-ridden music concrete and social challenge. Most post-rockers, then and now, have stuck with a glowering reduction, a boiling-out of rock posturing leaving a glum muted residue of passive riffs and patterns… actually, more of an opt-out than a boil-out; in which say, the impact of Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’ is much-cited but rarely remembered in terms of how it can inform and colour the music, much less for the intimations it can throw up.

Though they’re not overturners – at least, not in the tradition of the bands I’ve cited above – third-generation London post-rockers Rumour Cubes are a welcome exception to the procession of drab refuseniks that make up the bulk of the post-rock movement. It’s probably partly because they’re proud and self-confessed “counter-revolution(aries)”, founded from the start around violin, guitar and electronics and obtaining their rock instrumentation later rather than using and rebelling against it from the start. Their origins, too, stick in post-rock’s teeth. Violinist Hannah Morgan lied about her knowledge of the genre in order to bluff her way into the starting lineup, while guitarist/main composer Adam Stark and drummer Omar Rahwangi were already impatient with its dour restrictions. In an interview with Chaos Theory, Adam’s stated that “as a band we are painfully aware of how boring post-rock can be… what we are trying to do is take what we find amazing about those bands that have influenced us and that are part of our community, and do something new with it.”

What Rumour Cubes have done is in as much in the in the lines of good prog rock as good post-rock – opening the gates to a variety of ingredients and described as a “luminous re-imagining of very many constituent parts” by ‘Louder than War’. As with underrated Aussie unit Apricot Rail, the toned-down interweave of guitars and the Krautrock groove bass often aim for a slow-building pastoral ecstasy while the band seeks a sweet spot that’s more country and roots than graphs and laboratory. The dancing interplay, in particular, between Hannah and viola player Terry Murphy ducks lemony-minimal string textures in favour of something that’s more country hoedown or folk fiddle. Rumour Cubes often hit their own delightful merge-point between the rustic and the highly technological, performing on bowed banjo and (the ubiquitous) post-rock glockenspiel in addition to the guitars, strings, keyboards and percussion, adding brass and harps where they can, and regularly bringing in instruments like the gestural technology of mi.mu gloves, new uses for joystick controllers, software-synchronised video displays and a battery of custom effects pedals to create new textures. Their gigs are, in consequence, joyous and open-ended experiences: collaborations, on and offstage with poets and filmmakers result in the music never stagnating.

Following two years of silence, and four without new music, Rumour Cubes return to live work via a gig at the Underdog Gallery near London Bridge, in order to premiere a batch of new music (including upcoming single ¡No Pasarán!, which will be out in a few week’s time). Meanwhile, here are some previous bits of Cubery to whet the appetite.



 
A couple of other acts are joining the show – firstly, amplified French acoustic violinist Agathe Max, who fled classical music around twenty years ago in favour of improvised sonic textural music and electrically-enhanced string-drones. Currently playing with Kuro and Mésange, she’s appearing alone on this occasion in order to offer a set of solo violin works. Secondly, Dream Logic: the recent solo project from Adam Fulford (previously known as the guitarist for Bristolian post-rockers This Is My Normal State) It’s pealing, cool-busting stuff which sees Adam all but drowning his own plagent piano lines, guitars and basses in eager tides of yearning orchestral strings and feverish noise clutter, bringing him comparisons to Nils Frahm and to A Winged Victory for the Sullen. This is Dream Logic’s third show (following previous support slots for Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment’s rulebreaking alter-ego the Night Shift and for rebranded ambient post duo VLMV (previously ALMA) and live arrangements usually involve a string quartet: let’s hope he comes up with the goods on this occasion, too.





 
Echoes And Dust presents:
Rumour Cubes + Agathe Max + Dream Logic
The Underdog Gallery, Arch 6, Crucifix Lane, Southwark, London, SE1 3JW, England
Friday 14th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

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A little later in the month, jumpy and unpredictable Norwegian art-rockers Major Parkinson are dipping into England as part of an autumn European tour presenting their new ‘Blackbox’ album (and which also includes Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands). A jaggedly muscular alternative pop proposition, Major Parkinson’s music recalls a host of eclectic forebears such as The Monochrome Set and Faith No More: most notably, they’ve become a hit with the sometimes partisan (and often hard-to-impress) Cardiacs fanbase, who appreciate unrestrained complex melodicism and truckloads of energy, and have been up and yelping about this band for a while now.

I can’t really top this for an intro…

“Major Parkinson write tunes. But with influences from across the rock and classical genres (from The Beatles to Cardiacs) and a warped vision of the musical world, their tunes are like no other. You may hear a snippet of an East European folk song, a nursery rhyme, a stage musical, even a rock anthem, all played out on a range of instruments that a symphony orchestra couldn’t muster – synths, strings, old typewriters, brass and reputedly a decommissioned jet fighter engine. The musical scores behind their songs are both monumental and breathtaking – explosive synth and guitar sections that pound at your heart and then instantly make it melt with beautiful choral harmonies, and then drawn in you will dance and sing along as if centre-stage in a West End show.

“With songs too that cover subjects as diverse as Pavlovian hounds to ducks in the pond, the sheer scale and absurdity of the Norwegian band’s extraordinary musical world can only be truly appreciated by seeing their seven-piece stage performances live.”

 
All of the upcoming shows appear to be solo flights for the Major, other than London, Berlin and St Gallen. No news yet on the Berlin guest, but in London support comes (bizarrely, but delightfully) from Sterbus, the quirky Anglophile Italian art-popper similarly beloved of Cardiacs fans and who’s sitting on what promises to be one of 2018’s sunniest and most enjoyable rock albums: he’ll be playing with a band including longterm woodwind-and-vocal sidekick Dominique D’Avanzo, Pocket Gods’ keyboard wizard Noel Storey and Cardiacs drummer Bob Leith. In St Gallen, the gig’s being opened by bouzouki-toting Dutch psych-exotica rockers Komodo, whose music also draws on raga, hip hop, desert blues, rumba and ’60s harmony pop and surf rock.

 
Full dates:

  • The Hare & Hounds, 106 High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7JZ, England, Wednesday 26th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Thursday 27th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • The Water Rats, 328 Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London, WC1X 8BZ, England, Friday 28th September 2018 7.30pm (with Sterbus) – information here and here
  • Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M1 1DF, England, Saturday 29th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Hafenklang, Große Elbstrasse 84, 22767 Hamburg, Germany, Monday 1st October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
  • Cassiopeia, Revaler Str. 99, 10245 Berlin, Germany, Tuesday 2nd October 2018, 7.30pm (with support t.b.c) – information here, here and here
  • Backstage München, Reitknechtstr. 6, 80639 München, Germany, Wednesday 3rd October 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
  • Grabenhalle, Unterer Graben 17, 9000 St.Gallen, Switzerland, Thursday 4th October 2018, 7.30pm (with Komodo) – information here, here and here
  • Orange Peel, Kaiserstraße 39, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Friday 5th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
  • ProgPower Europe 2018 @ Jongerencentrum Sjiwa, Hoogstraat 1a, 5991 XC Baarlo, Netherlands, Saturday 6th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here

 

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September 2018 – more Daylight Music sessions in London – The Cornshed Sisters, Mesadorm and Kadialy Kouyate (15th September); The Left Outsides, Sister Cookie and Albecq (22nd September); ‘The Sea at the End of Her String’ with Resina, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch and Shida Shahabi (29th September)

8 Sep

Daylight Music (London’s best regular free gig series – family-friendly, but never letting that spoil or limit its sense of curiosity and enquiry) sprouts back into action again mid-month for its 2018 autumn season. The gigs in the September set are a typical Daylight melange: art-pop, roots pop, electro-acoustica, folk-pop, post-classical, Kouyate griot and ambient electronica.

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The 15th September show features The Cornshed Sisters, Mesadorm and Kadialy Kouyate.

Daylight Music 287: The Cornshed Sisters + Mesadorm + Kadialy Kouyate,15th September 2018

“The Cornshed Sisters are four singer-songwriters based in Tyne and Wear, who weave together pop, folk, ballad and protest music into a unique and distinctive style. Drawing on a palette of solo and harmony vocals and a blend of acoustic and electronic instruments, they convey their stories with sensitivity and humour.

“Formed in Bristol in 2015, Mesadorm is the new collaborative project of Blythe Pepino, formerly of London art pop trio Vaults. Debut album ‘Heterogaster’ is based around ideas of family, sex, trust and disconnection, using layered rich vocal harmonies to represent these issues, resulting in a truly special and original sound.

“Kadialy Kouyate is a musician, a singer songwriter inspired by the West African Griot repertoire. Born into the great line of Kouyate Griot in Southern Senegal, Kadialy’s mesmerising kora playing and singing style have been appreciated in many prestigious venues as both a soloist and in different ensembles.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tygFh25Hpr4
 
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The 22nd September show features The Left Outsides, Sister Cookie and Albecq.

Daylight Music 288: The Left Outsides + Sister Cookie + Albecq, 22nd September 2018

“The Left Outsides (Alison Cotton and Mark Nicholas) are a wife/husband duo based in London. Their atmospheric, hypnotic songs echo Nico’s icy European folk, pastoral psychedelia and chilly English fields at dawn. Their recent album, ‘All That Remains’ album continues to achieve deserved critical acclaim, having been placed as folk album of the month in ‘The Guardian’ during May and receiving regular plays on BBC6 Music and WFMU in the USA.

“Sister Cookie is a fixture of the vintage and retro music scenes in London. Having absorbed different genres of music throughout her formative years, from the juju, highlife, reggae and soul records favoured by her mother to the jazz LPs in her father’s collection, she developed a lasting passion for jazz and the blues, together with a unique sound and charisma.

“Albecq is the project of three London-based experimental artists and composers – Angus MacRae, James Jones, and Thom Robson. The collective was formed in late 2016 based on a love of vintage synths, unhurried free-flowing soundscapes, and the pioneering ambient expeditions of Basinski and Stars Of The Lid.”

https://soundcloud.com/cardinaldistro/the-left-outsides-the-yellow-wallpaper

 
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The 29th September show is the collective concert ‘The Sea At The End Of Her String’, showcasing the work of four post-classical female composer/performers on FatCat Records’ 130701 imprint: Resina, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch and Shida Shahabi. (As previously posted, this last gig is part of a late September tour which also takes in Brighton, Bristol and Faversham.)

Daylight Music 289: The Sea at the End of Her String: Resina + Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch + Shida Shahabi, Saturday 29th September 2018

“Resina is the alias of Karolina Rec, a cellist and composer based in Warsaw, Poland. A compulsive live artist, Karolina’s style is primarily characterized by personal language of improvisation and alternative approach to melody.

“Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch is an award-winning French pianist/composer currently living in London. Spanning film score, bespoke composition and sound design, her work is connected by its high quality and its evocative, meticulous craft – a common sensibility of elegant, instinctual composition.

“Shida Shahabi is a Swedish-Iranian pianist/composer and is currently based in Stockholm. She has made site-specific sound installations, plays in bands and writes music both solo and for dance, film, theatre and fine art contexts. Her debut album is set for release in 2018.”

 
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All gigs are at the usual place – Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England – and are free, but chuck a fiver in the bucket to keep things going. Dates below:

  • Daylight Music 287: The Cornshed Sisters + Mesadorm + Kadialy Kouyate – Saturday 15th September 2018, 12:00pm – information
  • Daylight Music 288: The Left Outsides + Sister Cookie + Albecq – Saturday 22nd September 2018, 12:00pm – information
  • Daylight Music 289: The Sea at the End of Her String: Resina + Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch + Shida Shahabi, Saturday 29th September 2018, 12:00pm – information

 
Details on October Daylight concerts to follow in due course…
 

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September 2018 – women singing (in London, mostly, and Cambridge) – Ana Silvera (15th), Susanna Wallumrød (27th), Hear Her Sounds evening with The Butterfly Wheel, Mary-Grace Dineen and Imogen Bliss (19th)

4 Sep

In Cambridge on, the 15th, there’s a repeat performance for Ana Silvera’s ‘Oracles’ song cycle, following its appearance at the South Bank Centre back in July, where Ana was bolstered by a Kate Church/Alice Williamsondance film, a folk-jazz string trio, piano, percussion and the multi-instrumental/singing skills of Listenpony’s Josephine Stephenson. The Cambridge show’s stripped down (just Ana and Josephine this time, and perhaps the dance film) but should still deliver. Beautifully crafted and sung, it’s an Anglo-Portuguese meditation and discussion of familial bereavement (Ana’s mother and brother) and of the shifting landscapes of migration. Originally conceived to have a choral sound and scape, it draws “on folk tales and myths to chart a transformative journey from profound grief to tentative acceptance.”

The last time around, I suggested that it was “a wide-spectrum take on adult pop without a trace of that genre’s unnecessary blandening: an as-it-happens assessment of the dramatic personal shifts in position following the loss of both loved ones and of the relationship one has with them while they’re alive. What I’ve heard of it so far suggests a similar vivacity as her songs elsewhere on album or in her theatrical work – vividly characterized narratives of internal reflection and of landscapes both physical and emotional, mingling detailed, nakedly honest personal verbal imagery and an influx of Portuguese folk feel in a way which makes (Ana) sound a little like an Iberian Jane Siberry.”

 

In London on the 27th, Norwegian singer Susanna Wallumrød plays her only British show of 2018. Originally – during the mid-Noughties – her ghostly, questioning, sighing vocal originally fronted The Magical Orchestra’s Nordic-jazz/ambient-pop reinventions of assorted pop, country and rock standards. Since then she’s moved on to other collaborations – with holy-meditative jazz pianist Tord Gustavsen; with boundary-running song experimentalist Jenny Hval; and in particular with baroque harpist Giovanna Pessi (who’s contributed to three of her seven solo albums). Along with violinist Sarah-Jane Summers and accordionist Frode Haltli, Giovanna will be performing at this London concert, which showcases Susanna’s newest album ‘Go Dig My Grave’.

Post-Magical Orchestra, Susanna’s kept up her role as re-interpreter. While the majority of her solo albums (up to and including 2016’s consummate ‘Triangle’), have featured her own songs, her ongoing work is littered with cool-toned covers, reworkings, reframings. Songs by Sandy Denny, Thin Lizzy, ABBA, Prince, Nico, Will Oldham and others were cultivated on 2008’s ‘Flower Of Evil’; while her 2011 collaboration with Giovanna and fellow baroque/Early Music musicians Marco Ambrosini and Jane Achtman provided parallel takes on Nick Drake, Henry Purcell and Leonard Cohen.

‘Go Dig My Grave’ builds on this inquisitive, restaging impetus, with Susanna’s original pieces cheek-by-jowl with her takes on “Charles Baudelaire to Joy Division, English folk to American blues, a seventeenth-century lament by Purcell to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day” , all blended with “echoes of traditional music, baroque classics and dark ambient sounds.” It’s a project of timeshifts: or, more accurately, of superimposed time, in which songs and stylings of different eras interpenetrate and merge in spellbinding manner.

 
Dates:

  • Ana Silvera: ‘Oracles’ – The Junction, Clifton Way, Cambridge CB1 7GX, England, Saturday 15th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Susanna Wallumrød: ‘Go Dig My Grave’ – Rich Mix, 35- 47 Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch, London, E1 6LA, England, Thursday 27th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

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In between – on 19th September, in London – there’s the second in Hoxton’s ongoing ‘Hear Her Sounds’ evenings; a semi-acoustic live event in a small space, with cocktails, vegan snacks, all-female lineups and organisers/initiators The Butterfly Wheel as regulars, aimed at supporting emerging female musicans. (The first one slipped my attention back in July. That was a shame, featuring as it did Margot Weidemann’s desert-sparse psych-folk project Daisy Oracle and the “twist(ing) song structure(s), striking hallucinatory lyrics, and unexpected radiophonic sounds” of former Joanna And The Wolf frontwoman Johanna Glaza.)

Alongside the Wheel-ers, mandolinist/singer/loop-stationeer Imogen Bliss played support at The Mantis Opera’s August gig last month at Paper Dress. Now, as then, you can expect to hear her weaving together songs from the East and the West: delivering slender, sparkling arrangements of old pop hits from hither and yon, plus original songs and layered one-woman folk chorales with Romani, Armenian and Balkan origins.

A few examples are below, along with a couple from by billmate Mary-Grace Dineen. A south-east Londoner, Goldsmiths graduate and sometimes session multi-instrumentalist, Mary’s output as singer-songwriter seems to vary between zippy, polyrhythmic jazz-coustica reminiscent of Eva Abraham, Roberta Flack (or, more recently, Gabriela Eva) and sour-sweet Lauryn Hill-esque pop-reggae. Her lyrics betray restlessness, compassion and a conversational impatience with the unresponsive and the inert. It seems she’s been quiet for a few years; now she’s coming out to play again.

https://soundcloud.com/imogenbliss/ambee-dagheets
https://soundcloud.com/imogenbliss/love-cats

 

As for The Butterfly Wheel, they’ll be bringing their Gothic romance, their ritual chant and their vocal flair. Previously I’ve sniped a bit about the duo’s showy, overtly flowery mysticism; their self-hype, their claims of originality and experimentalism despite a transparent debt to Early Music-toting Goth-tinged forebears like Dead Can Dance or Miranda Sex Garden. But when the hype is done, and they get down to business, they do bring a new flavour to that ripe old stew.

Reading beneath the lush electrophonic drones and the climbing priestess incantations, you can draw that personal touch out of their songs like long strands of myth-soaked twine – those places where they’ve taken old bronze-age stories, boiled them down to their most archetypal juices and then infused a latterday consciousness, an active female note of resistance, a little #TimesUp and sky-father toppling amidst the bones and sinews. When I hear that peeping through, I’m sorry that I bitched…



 
The Butterfly Wheel and MOVI present:
Hear Her Sounds: An Evening of Live Female-Led Music featuring The Butterfly Wheel + Mary-Grace Dineen + Imogen Bliss
Matters of Vinyl Importance, 163 Hoxton Street, Hoxton, London, N1 6pJ, England
Wednesday 19th September 2018, 6.30pm – information here and here
 

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September 2018 – upcoming English post-classical gigs – Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Resina and Shida Shahabi join forces for ‘The Sea At The End Of Her String’ in Brighton, Bristol, London and Faversham (27th-30th September)

3 Sep

Raising little eddies in various coastal or tidal towns in southern England at the end of the month – here’s an evening of female post-classical artists: piano, cello, electronics and voices.

'The Sea At The End Of Her String', 27th-30th September 2018

“Having existed since 2001, the FatCat Records imprint 130701 label was set up (at a time way before it became popular or even recognised as a genre) as an outlet for new music based around artist’s using classical instrumentation in new, non-classical ways, and became a home to some of the most recognisable names in the now broad-reaching post-classical field, introducing the likes of Max Richter and Hauschka, as well as becoming a home for pianist/composers Dustin O’Halloran and Johann Johannsson.

“In the last few years, the imprint has renewed itself and expanded its scope, signing a number of new artists and becoming a full-time concern. This year, the label’s first four album releases all come from female artists and we are excited to introduce three of those on this four-date tour.

An award-winning French pianist and composer currently based in London, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s musical practice also spans film score, bespoke composition and sound design. Her work is connected both by its high quality and its evocative, meticulous craft – a common sensibility of elegant, instinctual composition.

“Having studied a Masters degree in composition at Goldsmiths whilst working for three years at online electronic store Bleep, these experiences show through in Emilie’s music, described by ‘Tiny Mix Tapes’ as “stunning… rich in reverb and resonance, sublime in the language its piano articulates, limned beautifully by orchestral and electronic ambience… melodic, graceful, eloquent, compelling.” ‘Exclaim!’ described Emilie as “quickly establishing herself as an important new voice in contemporary music. Her compositions for piano, viola, cello and electronics combine tender solo performances with rousing arrangements… Her exacting style produces a fully formed, gorgeously crafted result. Levienaise-Farrouch is one to watch.”

 
“Resina is the alias of Karolina Rec, a Warsaw-based cellist and composer and a compelling live artist. Karolina’s style is characterized by personal language of improvisation and an alternative approach to melody, using non-obvious characteristics of the instrument alongside electronics and her stunning voice.

“She has played throughout Europe, developing into an increasingly powerful performer supporting the likes of Sarah Neufeld, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Owen Pallett, Hauschka and labelmate Ian William Craig. Resina’s music has been described as “haunting” by ‘The Guardian’ and “ineffably beautiful” by ‘Tiny Mix Tapes’, whilst ‘Self-Titled’ recently described her as offering a “mesmerizing take on post-classical music… that’ll leave the hairs on your neck standing straight up.”

 
“Shida Shahabi is a Swedish-Iranian pianist and composer currently based in Stockholm, whose debut album is set for release om 130701 this October. Shida studied piano from the age of nine and began writing melodies on the instrument as soon as she could compose with two hands. Since finishing her studies at The Royal institute of Art in Stockholm in 2013, Shida has made site specific sound installations, played in numerous different bands/constellations and written music both solo and for dance, film, theatre and fine art contexts.

“Shida signed to 130701 earlier this year, having blown the label away with the dreamy, homespun charm of her album demos. Fans of the likes of Nils Frahm, Goldmund, Dustin O’Halloran and Erik Satie will find something to fall for here.”

 
Dates:

  • Church of Annunciation, 89 Washington Street, Brighton, West Sussex, BN2 9SR, England, Thursday 27th Septemeber 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here
  • Rough Trade, Unit 3 Bridewell Street, Bristol, BS1 2QD, England,, Friday 28th September 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
  • Daylight Music @ Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England, Saturday 29th September 2018, 12.00pm (as part of Daylight Music season, autumn 2018) – information here and here
  • The Hot Tin, St. Saviour’s Church, Whitstable Road, Faversham, Kent, ME13 8BD, England, Sunday 30th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here

 
While on the subject, there’ll be more news on other upcoming Daylight Music shows shortly.

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September 2018 – upcoming London rock and experimental gigs – Zimpel/Ziolek and Rotten Bliss in Dalston; Warren Schoenbright, Riotmiloo and Metalogue in Camden (both 7th September)

1 Sep

This coming Friday, 7th September, is looking like a day for hard choices in London. In addition to Pita’s rumbling electronica gig in Homerton with Finlay Shakespeare, there are two more inspiring and atmospheric gigs on the table at the same time…

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Zimpel/Ziołek + Rotten Bliss, 7th September 2018One of the trump cards for Rocket Recordings at their twentieth anniversary show in London back in March was the first British performance by Polish duo Zimpel/Ziołek. Now Baba Yaga’s Hut have tapped them for their first headlining performance in London, at Café Oto.

Speaking for myself, I don’t buy into the reductive nature of musical genres – acoustica, prog, noise, whatever the hell indie rock/pop is after forty years of arguments. When it becomes more about imposed fan codes than the music, I tend to slip away. Far better to stand back and take in the art of those musicians who aren’t constrained by the fuss and the more constricting tropes… and Zimpel/Ziołek are one of those teamings that step gracefully yet urgently through and around genre.

‘The Quietus’ may have summarised Kuba Ziołek‘s overall work as “magic brutalis(m)“, and that Rocket gig may have been mostly sold to a noise music/post-punk psych crowd, but those lucky or smart enough to make the gig were treated to a fascinating forty-minute Zimpel/Ziołek set-cum-ritual in an all-enveloping, high-volume, high-presence atmosphere; Kuba’s guitar, voice and treatments and Wacław Zimpel‘s saxophones embracing and touching on electric counterpoint, lonesome acoustic folk, rippling electro-psych, ECM ambient jazz and oceanic noise blanketing, all sleeted and sluiced by psychedelic lighting. See below for the full works, and for what you might expect at Oto.

 
In support is Jasmine Pender’s electric-cello-&-voice project Rotten Bliss (recently seen at a Rude Mechanicals show in July and at a Myth-O-Rama evening in April). Sometimes savage in her playing, Jasmine boils up a weird tempestuous cocktail of noise, textured melodics, bass riffs, drone and unsettling beautiful vocals, intimating surreal stories and events incorporating “dystopian harbours, amorous fishes, nightwatchmen and transcendence.”

 
Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Zimpel/Ziolek + Rotten Bliss
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Friday 7th September 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here

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On the same night, Chaos Theory present their latest “beautiful medley of noise, industrial, post-punk and electronic sounds” at their homebase in Camden, the Black Heart. Over to them for word on the acts I’ve not encountered before:

Warren Schoenbright + Riotmiloo + Metalogue, 7th September 2018

“An energetic live experience, Riotmiloo is the project of the singer of garage-punk-riotgrrrl project Venom Seeds. Encapsulating the vocals, screams and protest of women’s real life stories, her haunting and powerful vocals create a cathartic and hypnotic rhythm and noise experience. Often found performing live with producer Eva|3, the integration of post-industrial bleakness with riotous punk fury is an experience to behold. Her debut concept collaboration album, ‘La Pierre Soudée’, was released via German label ant-zen in 2015 and saw her collaborate with different electronic, industrial and noise producers, reflecting their styles and weaving her messages into their music.

 
“Metalogue is an electronic producer who we’ve seen performing at experimental, post-rock, industrial, live soundtrack and IDM events. His uncompromising attention to detail, with his audio and tactile sensitivity, has led to an already broad selection of lavish records. He has shared the stage with Jarboe, Father Murphy, Huron, thisquietarmy, Only Echoes Remain, end.user and Shelley Parker, has EPs out on Abstrakt Reflections and Section 27, and is one of the minds behind underground IDM promotion Towards Collapse. Tonight he’s going to play an entirely new set.”



 
Headlining are Warren Schoenbright, whom CT describe as “an improvisational trio who make ritualistic tribal noise using guitar, vocals, electronics and drums. They play to audiences and appeal to fans of metal, ambient, electronic and even prog. Their latest single Excavations, out on Vacant Fulfilment, was inspired by the abandoned machinery of a now-defunct haematite mine. Dominated by fractured absorbing rhythms, being in the room with them is an absolutely exhilarating experience.”

The Schoenbright boys have been in ‘Misfit City’ before. They were participants in a Baba Yaga show in 2016 when, despite their latterday noise rock credentials, I went off on a tangent about how they reminded me of “the hackle-raising anticipatory stillness of Bark Psychosis on ‘Scum’, or of the eerie King Crimson sextet improvs from the mid-‘90s… murky, pulmonary, oft-detonating free-instrumental ghost-rides… Hissing, spitting drum improvisations and head-slithers from a jazz corner combine with boiling brewing ambient vapours from the electronic side to form spectacular instrumental illuminations. Dynamically speaking, it can go from all-out drum hammering and scourscreech to tense gaps and lacunae in which the sound withdraws and poises. Often it sounds like slow-motion night trains caught in a series of stretched-out near misses, watched from the goods-yard shadows by a pair of twitchy, punchy hobos.”

Warren Schoenbright were also at the More News From Nowhere all-dayer in March this year, when I previewed them as “slithering, thickety… craft(ing) lengthy, ambitious and luminous experiments from poised near-silence to hammering viciousness”. By then, a fair amount of what I was writing was out of date. Drummer Daniel McClennan is the only man standing since the early duo days – part of a gradual and piecemeal band shift involving the recruitment of bass player/bellower Alex Virji and this year’s addition of well-established Spanish noise guitarist/vocalist Iker Ormazabal Martínez, plus (and perhaps crucially) the amicable departure late last year after the recording of Excavations, of electronics/noiseman Matthew Pastkewicz, the original sound-sculpting reflector to Dan’s drum attack.

I guess it’s fair to expect a more hardcore noise-rock approach by now; and if a band’s determined and visionary enough, it can keep an interesting perspective and output even after drastic shifts in personnel and instrumentation… but I’m hoping that Warren Schoenbright don’t change too much. The world of noise rock can, in many circumstances, turn into a cul-de-sac full of black mirrors and musicians wedged into them, echoing blankly into each other. The Schoenbrights were much more than that – arresting, head-turning musicians creating absorbing, intriguing musical landscapes; and, like Zimpel/Ziołek, arcing above genre simplicities.

We’ll see what we’ll see. Meanwhile, here’s a video clip of the McClennan/Virji/Pastkewicz lineup last summer; plus Excavations, and sound from an early 2014 live set…



 
Chaos Theory Music Promotions presents:
Warren Schoenbright + Riotmiloo + Metalogue
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 7th September 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
 

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September 2018 – upcoming experimental electronica gigs in London – Pita plus Finlay Shakespeare and Nik Colk Void at Sutton House (7th & 8th September); Andrew Heath and Toby Marks at the Old Church (21st September)

31 Aug

A couple of interesting electronic music shows in historic buildings, coming up in various parts of Hackney during September…

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Pita (plus guests), 7th & 8th September 2018

Second-wave industrial/noise music star and extreme computer music pioneer Peter Rehberg (a.k.a. Pita) will be filling up the old Tudor space of the Great Chamber of Hackney’s Sutton House with sounds from his current modular analogue electronics work, on a double date postponed from May.

“Born in London, Rehberg has resided in Vienna for his adult life. It was here, in the early ’90s, that Rehberg harnessed aspects of noise, industrial, electro-acoustic and techno to develop a new approach to music. Whether constructing an album entirely from the recordings of a fridge, or harnessing the live electronic potential of laptops soon after they hit the market, Pita has always been at the forefront of contemporary radical music practice.

“Birthing the extreme computer music genre, scoring the works of controversial French theatre director Gisele Vienne, ongoing collaborations with Jim O’Rourke, Fennesz, Marcus Schmickler and Stephen O’Malley… all define Rehberg’s open ended approach to the creative act. As head of the influential Editions Mego family of labels, he has released albums by renowned artists like Fennesz, Heather Leigh, Klara Lewis, Kevin Drumm, Thomas Brinkmann, Florian Hecker, Bernard Parmegiani, Russell Haswell, KTL, Iannis Xenakis, Oren Ambarchi, Bill Orcutt, Mark Fell and many more.

“As Pita, Rehberg has produced over a dozen albums, covering an astonishing variety of experimental electronic styles. The ‘Get Out’/’Get Down’/’Get Off’ trilogy received broad international critical acclaim and helped define the radical underground experimental electronic scene of the 90’s. Pita has played numerous concerts all over the world including SONAR, ATP, CTM Berlin, MUTEK, Donaufestival, Le Guess Who?, Atonal etc. In 1999 he won the Prix Ars Electronica for Digital Musics & Sound Art.”

Pita’s most recent recorded offering is his 2016 album ‘Get In’, his first in twelve years and his first following a 2015 return to live work with a new modular setup. It’s a tremendously assured work, sometimes bullish, with none of the noncommittal airiness that often blights the EM and ambient genres.

Part of this is to do with scale – it’s a varied, huge-sounding record which sidesteps simple vulgar loudness for an impressive architectural dominance. Wherever Pita offers gently scintillating greenhouse meditations, they also happen to be the size of the Eden Project; his Galaxian blip-brainstorms, meanwhile, crack the game cabinet and head for great-hall pronouncements. With barely an obvious beat in sight, this is an urgently physical music which also puts the mind on sharp alert. There’s glitch and squelch; but there’s also grand romanticism which sternly punishes itself, and challenges the listener with passages of synthesized orchestral meditation penetrated by shrieks of solo noise and a frowning, compelled patina of distortion vandalism. This is exceptional stuff.

 
On each of his two Sutton House concerts, Pita will be joined by a guest musician.

On Friday 7th, it will be Finlay Shakespeare: analogue synth minder to the stars (via his work at the Moog Sound Lab) and also chief engineer and founder of Future Sound Systems, where he builds worryingly-named modular components including the Convulsion Generator, the Spectral Devastator and an updated version of Chris Carter’s Throbbing Gristle sound-processing unit, the Gristleizer (as used to unsettling effect throughout the original Gristle’s career).

Since last year, via his prolific series of ‘Housediet’ releases, Finlay has been creating his own passionate and evocative take on old-school experimental European synthpop, filled with flattened analogue blatters, skirling fanfares, cybernetic dance pulses and borderline-hysterical incantatory pop vocals.


 
On Saturday 8th, the guest will be Nik Colk Void. Twenty years ago (as Nikki Colk) she was running songblasts of pop-punk through dense effects-pedal work as frontwoman for Norwich experimental rockers KaitO. These days, she’s to be found as one-half of Factory Floor and one-third of post-Throbbing Gristle trio Carter Tutti Void.

Nik’s solo work leaves songcraft far behind in favour of wonderfully suggestive post-industrial sonic abstractions. Haunted factories, steam hisses and wheel-rim scrapes; neurotically-looped ventilation-duct eavesdroppings on unseen devices; or even something as simple as single-scratch passes (like bored, rolling marbles) paired with intermittent grain bag-rattles, like blank shamanic rituals played out on abandoned machine-shop benches.

 
I-D.A Projects & care in the community recordings present:
The New Arts & Music Programme at Sutton House: PITA
Sutton House, 2-4 Homerton High Street, Homerton, London, E9 6JQ, England
– Friday 7th September 2018, 7.30pm (with Finlay Shakespeare) – information here and here
Saturday 8th September 2018, 7.30pm (with Nik Colk Void) – information here and here

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A fortnight later, and a mile or so northwest, Toby Marks and Andrew Heath are bringing a softer, spacier double bill of solo electronic music to London within the preserved Saxon confines of Stoke Newington’s Old Church. Full details below.

 
Andrew Heath + Toby Marks, 21st September 2018“A soundscape artist and composer, Andrew Heath creates quiet, ambient, lower-case music based around piano, electronics and field recordings, drawing inspiration from a simple piano motif, an electronic shimmer or a processed found sound. The work he produces blends piano, electronics and found sounds into a mix that on the surface sounds quite minimal and open, but on closer listening, contains detailed fragments, constantly shifting and changing place.

“Early collaborations using Fender Rhodes, piano and electronics with fellow musician, Felix Jay under the name Aqueous led to a partnership with the legendary Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Andrew went on to produce a number of video and site-specific, sound installations which re-introduced him to the technique of working with field recordings, often leaving in the sonic detritus that most would seek to eliminate as being “non-musical”.

“In performance, Andrew re-interprets his studio work weaving multiple layers of textural field recordings balanced with etherial whispers of electronic sound and half-glimpsed piano melodies. Recent performances have seen him add acoustic instruments to his palette – often bowed or e-bowed, but certainly not played conventionally. This is immersive, ambient music. It drifts. It constantly shifts as it charts new topographies, creating and following maps that are full of change.


 
“Banco de Gaia’s Toby Marks will be exploring the gentler end of his catalogue, presenting ambient works old and new accompanied by live improvisation and manipulation. Ranging from cinematic grandeur through tender minimalism to otherworldly fantasies, this performance will take you to places of beauty rarely visited.



 
“Visuals will be provided by Patrick Dunn (currently touring with Tangerine Dream) who blends real world imagery and computer generated graphics to create a mesmerising, immersive world.”

Disco Gecko presents:
Andrew Heath + Toby Marks
The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England
Friday 21st September 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
 

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September 2018 – upcoming London folk gigs – Nest Collective’s Campfire Club shows, part 1 – Curly Strings and Fran & Flora (6th September); She’Koyokh and Owl Parliament Choir (7th September); Alasdair Roberts and Counter’s Creek (14th September)

30 Aug

Here’s the first half of September’s set of Nest Collective Campfire Club open air, communal spaces shows. Info on the second half to follow in a week or so…

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The first gig, on Thursday 6th , features Curly Strings and Fran & Flora.

“Curly Strings is a four-piece band from Estonia which draws its inspiration from American bluegrass and their own personal heritage in the current Estonian cultural space. Intense and playful ensemble work, hauntingly beautiful melodies and sincere presentation of their music forms the main basis of the Curly Strings soundscape.

 
“Fran & Flora – a collaboration between ninja violinist Flora Curzon and folk/experimental cellist Francesca Ter-Berg – combines aspects of traditional string music and song from Eastern Europe with original compositions and improvisation. Having travelled across Europe to study with many great masters of Eastern European Roma and Klezmer music Fran & Flora perform this repertoire incorporating their own unique arrangements creating a sound that is both timeless and contemporary. They captivate their audiences with soulful laments, exquisite songs, irresistible dance tunes, and tales of their musical adventures.”

 
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One day later, there’s a joint show for klezmer aces She’Koyokh and the Owl Parliament Choir…

“Since bursting on to the kletzmer and Balkan music scene in the early noughties, busking at London’s East End markets, the outstanding She’Koyokh has been at the forefront of UK’s world music scene, releasing four critically acclaimed studio albums, bringing the stunning polyphonic melodies and intricate rhythms of Bulgaria and Macedonia, treasured songs and kolos from Serbian villages, exhilarating Gypsy dances from the Romanian mountains and the Jewish music of Eastern Europe to new stages, venues, radio stations and audiences.

 
“Owl Parliament Choir are a south London community choir, a group of friends and misfits united by their gleeful spirits, love of singing and feverish pursuit of the natural high induced by making music together. Led by Greg Staw, the choir’s repertoire is as wide as the eyes of the owls therein: Bulgarian folk songs, classical and contemporary compositions, English madrigals and original arrangements of pop classics. Anything with a soul is carefully brought to life and imaginatively crafted into colourful performances.”

 
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The 14th September gig features Alasdair Roberts and Counter’s Creek.

“Alasdair Roberts is one of a rare breed of musicians whose work has found favour with aficionados of both experimental/avant-garde music and traditional/folk music – as such, he has been the cover star of both Wire Magazine and fRoots Magazine. He is primarily a songwriter/composer, singer and acoustic fingerstyle guitarist as well as an interpreter/arranger of traditional songs and ballads from Scotland and beyond.

“Originally performing and releasing as Appendix Out, Alasdair began a formal solo career under his own name in 2001, and in 2013 became a member of the Scottish/English folk group The Furrow Collective (who’ve released two albums on Hudson Records and won the accolade of Best Group in the 2017 BBC Radio Two Folk Awards). Over the years, Alasdair has collaborated with a wide variety of fellow musicians such as Will Oldham, Jason Molina, Josephine Foster, Mairi Morrison and Karine Polwart; as well as with other artists including poet Robin Robertson, puppeteer Shane Connolly of Sokobauno Puppet Theatre and film-maker Luke Fowler.

 
“Counter’s Creek is an acoustic folk trio based in London who make original music inspired by the folk music of the British Isles and beyond. Jigs, reels, grooves from Eastern Europe and West Africa, catchy melodies with closely interwoven harmonies allied to a real sense of swing and dance energy.

“Fiddler Tom Newell is known for his work with Effra, The Ceilidh Liberation Front, Alex Mendham & His Orchestra and assorted pop acts, and also plays banjo and mandolin (not to mention charango and mouth harp). Guitarist Moss Freed plays with jazz/folk group Flekd, the Spike Orchestra, has recently recorded for John Zorn’s Tzadik label and is currently researching a PhD at Hull University. Whistle player Jonathan Taylor has worked in many different musical genres: best known as a jazz pianist who’s played with artists such as Pee Wee Ellis, Fred Wesley, Ruby Turner and various British jazz luminaries, he’s also co-founder of Tango Siempre, appeared on Strictly Come Dancing and arranged music for Robert Wyatt. Three musicians from very different backgrounds, united by a love of acoustic folk music, great tunes and earthy dance grooves.”

 
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Full dates:

  • Campfire Club: Curly Strings + Fran & Flora – Kindred Studios, 18 Saltram Crescent, West Kilburn, London, W9 3HW, England, Thursday 6th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: She’Koyokh + Owl Parliament Choir – (secret location t.b.c.), London, England, Friday 7th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Alasdair Roberts + Counter’s Creek – Glengall Wharf Garden, 64 Glengall Road, Peckham, London, SE15 6NF, England, Friday 14th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

 

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August 2018 – upcoming hip hop and dance gigs in London – ‘Ear Shots’ with Brother Portrait, Shunaji, Paul White, Confucius MC and Chris P Cuts (30th August); resistance worldbeat ladygrooves, grunge-soul, grigri and more with GRRRL, Sounds Of Harlowe, Bamako Overground and DJ Hot Bread (31st August)

28 Aug

Notes on two imminent beats-and-words gigs in south London…

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Peckham’s Ghost Notes offers up an end-of-August hip hop evening “bringing together lyricists from all corners to create something positive” – all available for free, it’s strictly a “no bad vibes” evening. It’s hosted by Irish/British/Grenadian-rooted rapper and Con+Kwake member Confucius MC (whose London-toned post-Wu Tang/Tribe/Dilla approach has been keeping him occupied and appreciated for the last few years, most recently via his EPs ‘The Highest Order’ and ‘The Artform’) and by busy DJ Chris P Cuts.

 
This particular show features two rapper/writers. The first – Brother Portrait – is a member of Deptford’s Steam Down collective and one-third of Black/Other, a mood creator and wordsmith positor who (according to this ‘Gal Dem’ interview from two years ago) is primarily interested in “identifying what those boxes are [that make me, me]: community, diaspora, family… a process of opening them to start going inside and see what’s in there.” The second – Lagos-born, London-living, Rome-raised Shunaji – is a protege of beat-talent developers Future Bubblers, whose assured, slinky, cinema-inspired and code-switching flow ranges between the varied languages and dialects of her upbringing and travels, embracing multiplicity of perspective personae and while maintaining a muscle-solid sense of self.

Also on hand is music producer and Golden Rules member Paul White (whose contemporary broken beats and synths have backed and illuminated the likes of Open Mike Eagle, Obongjayar, Jamie Woon and Jamie Isaac).

 
‘Ear Shots – A New Kind of Cypher’: featuring Brother Portrait + Shunaji + Paul White + Confucius MC + Chris P Cuts
Ghost Notes, 95a Rye Lane, Peckham, London, SE15 4ST, England
Thursday 30th August 2018, 9.00pm – free event – information here and here

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The following night, Woodburner (responsible for all of those Dalston Eastern Curve gigs I’ve been posting about over summer) hits Brixton with the following:

“Woodburner is proud to present an all-night party at Hootananny Brixton, featuring global females GRRRL, Bristol power-unit Sounds Of Harlowe, and London-based Afro-inspiration from Bamako Overground.

“GRRRL is an electronic music collaboration between revolutionary women, brought together by In Place of War (a global organisation that supports artistic creativity in places of conflict as a tool for positive change). GRRRL is directed by Brazil’s Laima Leyton (Mixhell, Soulwax), and features an exhilarating mix of influential artists including Zimbabwe’s rapper queen Awa Khiwe, queen of Brazilian dancehall Lei Di Dai, the Ghanaian lioness of Africa Noella Wiyaala, UK/Bangladeshi vocalist Sohini Alam, and Caracan DJ/ percussionist María “MABE” Betania. GRRRL fuses together sounds of dark techno, ghetto bass, hip-hop, dancehall, reggae, soul and electronica.

 
“Dubbed “incendiary live hip-hop/soul rabble rousers packing deep lyrics, subterranean grooves and stratospheric brass” by ‘Sounddhism’ (and as “an almost erotic experience.” by ‘Yack Magazine Fat City’, Sounds Of Harlowe are a grunge-soul collective with a wide range of influences who blend elements of soul, hip-hop, metal and jazz to create their own signature brand of music. The Bristol-based group’s infectious live performances have allowed them to headline shows around the UK, as well as perform at a variety of festivals from the likes of Boomtown and Bestival, to Soundwave Croatia and Nozstock. This culminated in their first UK tour at the end of 2016 after a limited release the debut EP ‘Change Of Disposition’ which, after having some finishing tweaks made, received a full online release in January 2018.

 
“Bamako Overground bring grigri grooves and rocking desert blues from London via Bamako. The trio are irresistibly seduced by the music of West Africa, blending its influences overtly and covertly with their own carefully-selected flavours. Deep and soulful rhythms meet soaring melodies, while crunching three-part vocal harmonies speak of pilgrimage and placelessness to complete a brew that’s compelling and utterly unique.

 
“In between, DJ Hot Bread will spin afro and tropical bangers, nice and fresh.”

 
Woodburner & GRRRL present:
GRRRL + Sounds Of Harlowe + Bamako Overground, DJ Hot Bread (Woodburner)
Hootananny Brixton, 95 Effra Road, Brixton, London, SW2 1DF, England
Friday 31st August 2018, 8.00pm – (free before 9.00pm) – information here and here
 

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September 2018 – more Woodburner world/acoustica/pop sessions at Dalston Eastern Curve Gardens – Rum Buffalo Trio, Joe Corbin and Lorkin O’Reilly (4th September); M w S, Boe Huntress and Equal Echo (11th September); The Age Of Luna, Marine and Desert Rain (18th September); Choro Alvorada, Max Baillie and Li Alba (25th September)

27 Aug

More outdoor summer Woodburner gigs at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, as the season moves into its final month: holding autumn at bay while it can.

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The 4th September show features festival legends Rum Buffalo, bluesman Joe Corbin, and touring NYC artist Lorkin O’Reilly.

“Rum Buffalo fornicate with forgotten songs. They mingle in many genres but feed off the rich antique roots of swing and moody blues infiltrated with hip hop beats and filthy synth lines. It’s a surreal, vaudevillian show with outrageous costumes, twisted vocal harmonies, powerful beats and outrageous horn sounds. On the night expect a stripped-off trio show, revealing the core of their beastly natures.

 
“Joe Corbin is a blues and soul musician from South London. An accomplished guitarist, powerful singer, and true performer, watching Joe play is bound to blow you away.

 
“Since arriving in Hudson, NY from his native Scotland, Lorkin O’Reilly has been making a name for himself on the New York folk scene with his delicate guitar technique and deft lyricism. This year has seen him share stages with the likes of Charlie Parr, Nadia Reid, Willy Mason, Mick Flannery and Ciaran Lavery. His debut album ‘Heaven Depends’ was released on 24th August on Team Love Records.”

https://youtu.be/MTPYi9OLNO8
 

* * * * * * * *

The 11th September gig features R&B/soul collective M w S, North London songstress Boe Huntress, and new electronic collaboration Equal Echo.

“M w S is a London-based duo formed in Italy in 2013. Their musical influences are artists from soul, R&B and nu-soul (such as Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill) mixed with contemporary neo-jazz artists like Tom Misch and Masego and electro-influenced artists like Vallis Alps and Louis Matters. Their first EP ‘Swim’ is a mix of pop, contemporary R&B and nu-soul with lyrics that sometimes recall their home country; their latest release, Island, produced by Grammy-award winning London producer Aamir Yaqub (Rihanna, Ne-yo) is a soulful chilled track full of tropical and summery vibes. M w S are currently working on their next EP, due out in 2019.

 

“Boe Huntress grew up in Kent, playing and writing music from an early age. Her first job was writing songs for an online magazine, reviewing video games in song-form: a crash course in the art of songwriting, recording and producing, as well as in receiving immediate response to her work online. Studying Literature at university, Boe was inspired by both myth and feminism: beginning to play live, she was soon chosen by the IC Music Network as one of twelve up-and-coming artists to tour across Europe.

“Boe’s debut EP, ‘A Female Power’, is an earthy, epic debut reminiscent of both Kate Bush and Bjork. The EP is inspired by four female mythological figures (“we’ve been deprived of certain ways of seeing woman – this EP is an exploration of the darker, more unexplored aspects…”) and Boe’s taken it one step further by creating an immersive audio-visual show alongside the record. The EP is brought to life onstage by Aletta Dina on drums and Melanie Powell on synths and electronics, while Boe fronts the band with her raw, ethereal vocal and electric guitar.

 
“Equal Echo is a new collaboration from Londoners Hector Plimmer (DJ and producer/creator of last year’s acclaimed ‘Sunshine’ album of broken beat, trip hop, instrumental soul and field recordings) and Alexa Harley (fellow producer, songwriter and collaborating singer for Hybrid Minds, Tom Misch and Mt. Wolf). The pair initially started working together with a one-off collaboration in mind: however, once they started, it soon became clear this would be more than just a feature project. For the last year-and-a-half Harley and Hector have been meeting two days a week, almost every week, creating music that shares an equal input of musical ideas from one another.

The amalgamation of styles and musical backgrounds blend together to make a sound unlike either Harley or Hector produce alone, whilst still retaining the best attributes from both. Not only are they musical partners, they are also best friends. Over the last two years the dynamic live show has been previewed at Archspace and Ghost Notes, with their premier festival appearances at Brainchild and Glastonbury Festivals.”

 
* * * * * * * *

The last show, on 18th September, features London-based hip hop/R&B trio The Age Of Luna, sensual pop mythologists Marine and atmospheric Finnish world-folkers Desert Rain.

“The Age of Luna – “average joes with powerful minds” – number Butch Arkas, his schoolmate Kyote Noir and singer/saxophonist Daniella Wizard. Each brings their own influences and sensibilities to the table, and the end results reflect not just the four different musical personalities but the blend of tradition and technology that saw them get together in the first place. Despite their relative youth, the band has played over a hundred shows with festival plays at the likes of Glastonbury, Wireless, Secret Garden party and Live At Leeds. Their debut, self-titled album was released earlier this year to great acclaim and the band are busy working on new music due for release later this year.

 
“London-based Marine – formed in 2014 by Cara Sebastian (vocals and guitar), Beth Dariti (bass) and Kaja Magsam (drums), and described by ‘The Line Of Best Fit’ as “the musical equivalent of a creamy post-coital blush” – have just released their debut album ‘Fable Electric’, via The Vinyl Factory (following the beguiling singles Mount Olympus and Sirens).

“Produced by Rob Ellis (Anna Calvi, PJ Harvey, Cold Specks), ‘Fable Electric’ is an album that brims with exploratory wonder and bridges the gaps between spectral pop, dreamy grunge and ambient folk. Both wild and elegant, it is framed by intuitive beats, bass hypnosis that playfully counters melody, and a deep love of contrast. The vocal lines braid together over hooky guitar lines in a complex plait of old and new, understated and operatic, light and dark. The songs of Marine crystallized from mythology and fables, mingling with personal words and emotions to form tales of the ordinary and extraordinary. Their songs reference the underworld, seal demons, mighty Kraken, werewolves, witches and Gods, and even question the very nature of storytelling itself.

 
“Jyväskylä quintet Desert Rain are songwriter Ville Lähdepolku on guitar and vocals, Alex Lee on drums, Farshad Sanati on santour and vocals, Petri Pentikäinen on tabla and darbouka, and Ville Määttä on bass, keyboards, voice and a cluster of international wind instruments including Armenian duduk. They play hypnotic world-folk music that tends towards the mystic. From Finland to Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, just for you.”

https://soundcloud.com/user-140301247/nay-zam
 

* * * * * * * *

The last show, on 25th September, features choro band Choro Alvorada, international violin virtuoso Max Baillie, and the Latin-inspired songwriter Li Alba.

“Choro Alvorada is a London-based group who play Brazilian choro music of all styles, including lesser-known works and original compositions. Choro emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the late nineteenth century as a mixture of European harmony with African rhythm and improvisation, in a similar way to jazz and ragtime. The name comes from the Portuguese verb “chorar”, which means “to cry”, and indeed choro music certainly has its fair share of tear-inducing laments. But choro is mostly known for its lively, playful and syncopated melodies in the traditional setting of a “roda”; that is, with musicians playing informally around the table (drinking plenty of beer – provided by the loving fans, of course!).

“Choro Alvorada have the traditional instrumentation of the ‘regional’ choro ensemble: clarinet (played by Andrew Woolf), flute (played by Rachel Hayter), 7-string guitar (played by Luiz Morais), cavaquinho (played by Jeremy Shaverin) and pandeiro (played by Alua Nascimento). They play a wide variety of styles of choro, exploring influences from all over Brazil (and London). They play with the irresistable swing of samba from the south and baião from the north-east, and even in the style of frevo, a carnival dance from the north-east! Many of the choros they play are their own compositions, so you may find a Cockney twist to them. They famously continued to play through a thunderstorm at the Curve Garden in Summer 2017, bringing a portion of the audience onto the stage with them in the style of the traditional roda.

 
“Maverick violinist and violist Max Baillie is truly one-in-a-million. Born to the sound of his twin sisters practising scales and argeggios, raised by his concert-cellist father and violin-teacher mother, before travelling the world and gaining a first-class degree from Cambridge University in… Politics. Apart from that short sabbatical, Max’s whole life has been music. Yet when you watch and listen, there is a spontaneity in his playing that makes you realise that in spite of all the history, education, and practise, a Max Baillie has to be born rather than made. Max-in-a-million is an international artist, having performed in Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, France, Australia and many other corners in the last twelve months, both as a concert soloist and with other projects including ZRI, who fuse sounds of Brahms with gypsy and Hungarian folk. Witness.

 
“Singer. Linguist. Lover of Latin, jazz and folk traditions. Voice of velvet and force of nature. Li Alba grew up in London, listening to traditional Spanish and Greek music whilst training as a classical singer. Graduating from Guildhall juniors in music and RADA in acting, she fell away from opera and into wild Easter European theatre arts, as a professional member of the Gardzienice Theatre Company. Partaking in independent arts projects around the world she has worked through music and staged mediums with global practitioners including Katie Mitchell, Mark Ravenhill, James Brennan and Julian Maynard Smith.

“Li has contributed to London’s night life scene by supporting in the launches of two venues, Kansas Smitty’s and Juju’s Bar & Stage, and is now embarking on her solo career with a plethora of musicians with global flavours and feels. She is accompanied by guitarist Telmo Souza who has played for Rhythms Of The City and Ines Loubet (amongst many others), and who leads the astonishing Afro-samba ensemble Caravela.”

 
* * * * * * * *

All events are at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, 13 Dalston Lane, Dalston, London, E8 3DF, England on Tuesday evenings. Dates below:

  • Rum Buffalo Trio + Joe Corbin + Lorkin O’Reilly – Tuesday 4th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • M w S + Boe Huntress + Equal Echo – Tuesday 11th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • The Age of Luna + Marine + Desert Rain – Dalston Curve Garden – Tuesday 18th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Choro Alvorada + Max Baillie + Li Alba – Dalston Curve Garden – Tuesday 25th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

 

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August 2018 – upcoming London gigs – Phaze Theory blends occult Blake-and-Yeats visions with brooding jazz rock (28th August)

25 Aug

Phaze Theory, 28th August 2018

When I think of musicians citing the mystical, revolutionary poetry of Yeats or Blake, I’m likely to think of assorted classic rock fops; or young white literate/ dissolute pretenders fitting the pair in between their Rimbaud and Verlaine namedrops. The Libertines loved Blake; as have a swathe of musicans ranging from stadium botherers Robert Plant, Richard Ashcroft and U2 to dedicated underground upsetters like The Fugs, Duglen and Coil. Further delving turns up quotings and reverent steals by Pet Shop Boys and Bloc Party, plus the fact that Blake himself was a songwriter. As for Yeats, Joni Mitchell has set him to music, as has Van Morrison: the Hold Steady met him at a party in Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night, Bright Eyes quotes him in Four Winds; and from her debut album, Sinead O’Connor’s devastating Troy reshapes and reclaims his ‘No Second Troy’.

As for those who take on both, there’s North Sea Radio Orchestra with their sweet folk-toned chamber music settings. More prominently, there’s Patti Smith, who shook Blake-and-Yeats vision out into her early punk poetry and has kept it up ever since. Then there’s Patti’s ardent acolyte, Mike Scott of The Waterboys, who’s kept both by him on his travels: snarling about Blakean tigers and savage earth hearts on his debut album, capping ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ by fusing Yeats fairy tales with New York minimalism and Irish chamber-folk, and devoting a whole album to Yeats-isms twenty-three years after that.

 
What I’m getting at is that Blake-and-Yeats setters and expressers, in music, tend to be storm-tossed white romantics… with the music to match. Bar guesting singers here and there (including some formidable soul wailers), Phaze Theory are certainly white, are probably romantics, and may well be storm-tossed, but it’s initially a surprise to encounter their own take on this particular poetry; working it as a collective muse for a band that, while it calls its music art rock, has more in common with reggae, dub and the glowering Dark Magus electric wrack of Miles Davis in the early ‘70s.

Around in various forms since 2014, they’re led by a questing mystic of a tuba player, Christopher Barrett. Their conservatoire backgrounds and well-schooled chops belie their strange geological ferocity, stemming from an interest in Britain’s occult traditions and how these break through into sounds and words. Dedicated to “exploring the vastness of the musical cosmos” they lay claim to “roots in the deep grooves of the earth and the city and our branches reaching to the stars… we seek to free your feet, open your heart and liberate your spirit.”

In tone and intent, and at full heat, they’re an unexpected outpost of New Weird Britain, set in a jazzier wilderness in which Marco Quarantotto’s echoed drums, Tal Janes’ gnarled heavy guitar and in particular Barrett’s rumbling, adroit, effects-burnished electric tuba (which shifts seamlessly from bass to horn parts, sometimes with no immediate break) probe and scald across a foreboding, eerie terrain of post-industrial brambles, Tannoy vocals and perhaps a little Hendrix crunch. Compare and contrast their troubling, hallucinatory take on The Song of Wandering Aengus (recorded with Manchester singer Rae Jones) with the polished, melodious elegance of the Waterboys version above.

 
Currently collaborating with London rhythm-&-blues/Southern soul singer Arthur Lea, this imminent end-of-the-month gig at the Vortex is part of their ongoing process of bringing their music back to London and England after a brief Californian shift. Back to the grime but also back to the original fertility, I guess.

Phaze Theory
The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, Dalston, London, N16 8AZ, England
Tuesday 28th August 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
 

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August 2018 – upcoming London eclectic gigs – strange and compelling folk, pop, and improvisatory strands from L’Ocelle Mare, Daniel O’Sullivan and Cucina Povera at the Dentist (28th August)

24 Aug

There’s an intriguing multi-genre show coming up at the Dentist in Homerton, spanning weird folk, experimental pop and some delicious electro-vocal soundscaping.

Promoter Theo is more than capable of collating and unfurling his own spiel, so here’s me passing it on with the minimum of grubby tinkering…

L'Ocelle Mare + Daniel O'Sullivan + Cucina Povera, 28th August 2018

“…”The instrumentation is composite, rustic, yet paradoxically sophisticated: piano, 6 string bass banjo, mechanical metronome, tuning forks, claves, hand and foot clapping and tapping, mini amps, amps, subwoofer, microphones, small mix desk, bells, mouth organ fragments, concertina, componiums, “stringin it”, audio ducker, drum skins, clockwork motors…” A rare performance of the astounding music of L’Ocelle Mare is perhaps best trailed by the above instrumental inventory and the promise that Thomas Bonvalet (Powerdove/Cheval Frise) will bring forth an intense, highly syncopated and ultra-focused music from the chattering sonic menagerie it might seem to suggest. The Dentist’s cup will overflow given that the above will be prefigured by a solo appearance by Daniel O’Sullivan (Grumbling Fur/Laniakaea/This Is Not This Heat) playing what can only be described as wabi-sabi or null rotation in six-dimensional whortleberry and friends; and (in a late addition, pushing the bill in to the realms of triple headline transcendence) a live set from fabulous Glasgow based Fenno-karelian producer Cucina Povera.

“Self-taught multi-instrumentalist Thomas Bonvalet commenced his vocation as a bassist and cemented it as a guitarist at the heart of the band Cheval de Frise (1998-2004). Progressively straying from the guitar, he began to integrate foot tapping and various wind and percussive instruments into his performance, incorporating mechanical elements and stray amped-up objects into the soundscape. This formed the guiding principle of his solo project, L’Ocelle Mare, initiated in 2005, and continues to form the core of his instrumentation. In recent years Bonvalet has collaborated – most notably with Powerdove, Arlt, Radikal Satan, Jean Luc Guionnet, Arnaud Rivière, Will Guthrie, Gaspar Claus, Daunik Lazro, Fred Jouanlong and Sylvain Lemètre. Without renouncing his solo work, his interruption from it has allowed a slower and more elastic evolution, permitting ancient shapes to gradually metamorphose. In this way new compositions successively articulated themselves in an almost self-determining manner.

“‘Temps En Terre’ is the fifth album release from L’Ocelle Mare, and the first to have been recorded in a studio. The preceding releases were characterised by a marked acoustic: the echoey reverberations inherent to ‘Serpentement’ were thanks to the Protestant temple it was recorded in; ‘Engourdissement’ was entirely recorded in forest expanses, upon ponds and enclosed within remote wood cabins; ‘Porte d’Octobre’ was recorded entirely in urban spaces; and his first, unnamed album was entirely recorded in caves and churches. The release of ‘Serpentement’ in 2012 marked the end of a cycle of four progressive stages, homogeneous but distinct from one another, released with successive regularity, proceeding with the elaboration of his singular set up, implicating the human body into a simultaneity of associated gestures and sonic tools and forming a commonality of timbres and tremors. This structure remained fluid and adaptable, finding a balance which lent itself quite naturally to collaborations, entering into the fields of improvisation, folk, rock and contemporary music. The pieces forming ‘Temps en Terre’ however, are recorded under a harsher gaze, presented in far cruder light, comparable to that of a live recording.

 
“Daniel O’Sullivan is a London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist. Working across of range of musics and artistic platforms he has made a strong impact on the international avant community. Whether solo or in his varied collaborative projects, O’Sullivan’s work is remarkable in the way it infuses familiar everyday experience with traces of the uncanny, the secret and the magickal. Traces of his many projects all meet and mingle in his most recent album ‘VELD’: from his solo music as Mothlite to the lysergic songcraft and space-time vortices of Grumbling Fur and Laniakea, the reality-distorting zones of Æthenor and Ulver, the electronic pop of Miracle (with Zombi synth maestro Steve Moore), and his recent involvement with another pioneering London group, This Is Not This Heat.

“Released in June 2017 on Tim Burgess’ curated imprint O Genesis Recordings, ‘VELD’ is one of O’Sullivan’s most immediate and moving pop albums to date; yet one that’s strikingly dense and allusive, alive with enticing sonic diversions, hypnotic mantras and eerie biomechanical rhythms.


 
“Glasgow-based musician Maria Rossi, a.k.a. Cucina Povera, has named her project after a style of southern Italian traditional cooking associated with precarity and making-do; a philosophy of simplicity and stoicism that applies perfectly to the spare but beautiful music Rossi experiments with. Marrying minimal synth, field recordings and the hymnal dexterity of Rossi’s vocal performances, it creates a new language, sometimes literally, to be spoken in some mythological Fourth World we’ve yet to create.”

https://soundcloud.com/cucinapovera/sokerihyhma
https://soundcloud.com/cucinapovera/avainsyoppo
 
L’Ocelle Mare + Daniel O’Sullivan + Cucina Povera
The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Tuesday 28th August 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

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August 2018 – upcoming London jazz gigs – a few young women’s shows – Tomorrow’s Warriors Female Frontline (29th August); Romarna Campbell Trio (29th August); B L A N (C) A N V A S (30th August)

23 Aug

Following up the Jazz Herstory post last month, here’s a little more brief word-spreading about young female jazz action in the capital:

“Tomorrow’s Warriors Female Frontline developed out of the award-winning Tomorrow’s Warriors Emerging Artist Development Programme based at the Southbank Centre. This youthful all-women ten-piece jazz ensemble embodies the Warrior spirit in more than just serious musical talent. Playing a selection of upbeat jazz standards, funk and contemporary versions of some well-known classics from the likes of Kenny Garrett, Roy Hargrove and Freddie Hubbard, the Female Frontline is led by saxophonist Aleksandra Topczewska under the tutelage of Gary Crosby OBE.

“The rest of the Frontline is Loucin Moskofian (vocals), Kasia Kawalek (vocals/flute), Lettie Leyland (trumpet), Beth Hopkins (alto saxophone), Jelly Cleaver (guitar), Roella Oloro (keyboards), Izzy Burnham (bass guitar and double bass), Caroline Scott (drums) and Alana Curtis (percussion). For this evening they will be joined by special guest vocalist Cherise Adams-Burnett, who also went through the Tomorrow’s Warriors programme.”

TWLive presents:
Tomorrow’s Warriors Female Frontline
The Spice Of Life, 6 Moor Street, Soho, London, W1D 5NA, England
Wednesday 29th August 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here

 
* * * * * * * *
With that crucial first year of study at jazz hothouse Berklee College of Music now under her belt, emerging young Birmingham-born drummer, composer and bandleader Romarna Campbell is home for a while, but isn’t resting. Instead, she’s taking out two different ensembles (both led from the drum set, and drawing strongly on the Birmingham jazz talent base) to pursue her own current musical vision of “explosive moments, combined with quiet thoughtfulness inspired by a deep-rooted influence of bebop, hip-hop and neo-soul.”

Of these, her Romarna Campbell Trio also includes Ed Riches on guitar and Kokoroko bassist Mutale Chashi, and provides compositional space for all three. Her larger quintet B L A N (C) A N V A S features two tenor saxophonists (Xhosa Cole and Scottish sometime-looper Harry Weir), pianist David Austin Grey and bass guitarist Wayne Matthews.

Dates:

  • The Romarna Campbell Trio – Ghost Notes, 95a Rye Lane, Peckham, London, SE15 4ST, England, Wednesday 29th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Live at Jazz re:freshed: B L A N (C) A N V A S – Mau Mau Bar, 265 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London W11 1LR, England, Thursday 30th August 2018, 7.45pm – information here and here

Sorry that I’m short on much in the way of musical examples, since Romarna hasn’t recorded much on or off camera (though, if you like, you can take a listen to the tribal-house-influenced dance music which she records away from her main jazz work); but I do have this footage of a previous version of the Trio taking on a Miles Davis tune, and a few very murky videos of B L A N (C) A N V A S at work.

https://youtu.be/1GTB4R53-mk
https://youtu.be/CSgo4RhSmyM
https://youtu.be/OgtFrs7AHAw
 

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August-December 2018 – upcoming British and Irish rock gigs – Kiran Leonard on tour (26th August to 5th December, various)

20 Aug

Between late August and early December, the unsettlingly-talented Kiran Leonard will be making his way through England, Ireland and Scotland on a sporadic but wide-ranging tour; preparing for and celebrating the mid-October release of his new album, ‘Western Culture‘.

The first of Kiran’s albums to be recorded in a professional studio with a full band, ‘Western Culture’ comes at the tail-end of a comet-spray of home-made releases. Over the course of these, he’s leapt stylistically between the vigorous home-made eclectic pop of ‘Grapefruit’ and ‘Bowler Hat Soup’, sundry pop and rock songs (including twenty-plus-minute science fiction doom epics and explosive three-minute celebrations), the yearning piano-strings-and-yelp literary explorations of ‘Derevaun Seraun’ and the lo-fi live-and-bedroom song/improv captures of ‘Monarchs Of The Crescent Pail’ and ‘A Bit of Violence With These Old Engines’ (all of this punctuated, too, by the scrabbling electronica paste he releases as Pend Oreille and the prolonged experimental piano/oddments/electronics pieces he puts out as Akrotiri Poacher).

As much at home with kitchen metals as with a ukelele, a piano, or a fuzzy wasp-toned guitar solo, Kiran’s cut-up titles and his wild and indulgent genre-busting complexities are reminiscent of Zappa or The Mars Volta, while his budget ingenuity and fearless/compulsive pursuit of thoughts and his occasional psychic nakedness recall outsider bard Daniel Johnston. On top of that, he’s got the multi-instrumental verve of Roy Wood, Prince or Todd Rundgren; and his stock of bubbling energy and eccentric pop bliss means you can toss Mike Scott, Fyffe Dangerfield or Trevor Wilson into the basket of comparisons, though you’ll never quite get the recipe right.

 

As before, Kiran’s out with his usual band (Dan Bridgewood-Hill on guitar, violin and keyboards, Andrew Cheetham on drums, Dave Rowe on bass), which propels him into something nominally simpler – a ranting, explosive, incantatory mesh of art punk and garage-guitar rock which might lose many of the timbral trimmings of the records, but which is riddled with plenty of rhythmic and lyrical time bombs to compensate; a kind of punky outreach. Most of the dates appear to be Kiran and band alone, though supports are promised (but not yet confirmed or revealed) for Dublin, Brighton, Birmingham, Newcastle and Norwich; and his festival appearances at This Must Be The Place, End of the Road and Ritual Union will be shared with other acts aplenty. No doubt all details will surface over time.

 
What we do know is that the August date in London will also feature Stef Ketteringham, the former Shield Your Eyes guitarist who now performs splintered experimental blues: previewing his appearance in Margate last month, I described his playing as being “like an instinctive discovery: more punk than professorial, bursting from his gut via his heart to tell its shattered, hollered, mostly wordless stories and personal bulletins without the constraint of manners or moderation. For all that, it’s still got the skeleton of blues rules – the existential moan, the bent pitches and percussive protest that demand attention and serve notice of presence.” Judge for yourselves below.

 

The first Manchester date – in September – will be shared with Cult Party and The Birthmarks. The former’s the brainchild of Leo Robinson: multi-disciplinary artist, Kiran associate and songwriter; a cut-back Cohen or Redbone with a couple of string players to hand, delivering dry understated daydream folk songs (from the Americana mumble of Rabbit Dog to the twenty-minute meander of Hurricane Girl, which goes from afternoon murmur to chopping squall mantra and back again). The latter are long-running Manchester cult indie rock in the classic mold – over the years they seem to have been a clearing house or drop-in band for “people that are or have been involved with Sex Hands, Irma Vep, Klaus Kinski, Aldous RH, Egyptian Hip Hip, Human Hair, Sydney, lovvers, TDA, Wait Loss and many more.”



 
* * * * * * * *

Dates as follows:

(August 2018)

  • This Must Be The Place @ Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen, 1-1A Cross Belgrave Street, Leeds, Yorkshire, LS2 8JP, England, Sunday 26th August 2018, 1.00 pm (full event start time) – information here and here
  • The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Road, Hackney, London, E8 3AS, England, Wednesday 29th August 2018, 7.30pm (with Steff Kettering) – information here and here
  • End Of The Road Festival (Tipi Stage) @ Larmer Tree Gardens Tollard Royal, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP5 5PY, England, Thursday 30th August 2018, 9.45 pm – information here and here

(September 2018)

  • Partisan, 19 Cheetham Hill Road, Strangeways, Manchester, M4 4FY, England, Saturday 8th September 2018, 7.30pm (with Cult Party + The Birthmarks) – information here and here

(October 2018)

  • Ritual Union festival @ The Bullingdon, 162 Cowley Rd, Oxford, OX4 1UE, Saturday 20th October 2018, 11.00am (full event start time) – information here, here and here
  • The Cookie, 68 High Street, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE1 5YP, England, Monday 22nd October 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
  • The Portland Arms, 129 Chesterton Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB4 3BA, England, Tuesday 23rd October 2018, 7.00pm – information here
  • The Boileroom, 13 Stokefields, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 4LS, England, Wednesday 24th October 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
  • The Crescent Working Men’s Club, 8 The Crescent, York, Yorkshire, YO24 1AW, England, Thursday 25th October 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
  • The Parish, 28 Kirkgate, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, HD1 1QQ, England, Friday 26th October 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
  • The Green Room, Green Dragon Yard, Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, TS18 1AT, England, Saturday 27th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here

(November 2018)

  • The Roisin Dubh, Dominic Street, Galway, Ireland, Wednesday 21st November 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
  • Whelan’s, 25 Wexford Street, Dublin 2, Ireland, Thursday 22nd November 2018, 8.00pm (with support t.b.c.) – information here and here
  • Kasbah Social Club, 5 Dock Road, Limerick, Ireland, Friday 23rd November 2018, 9.00pm – information here, here and here
  • Cyprus Avenue, Caroline Street, Cork, T12 PY8A, Ireland, Saturday 24th November 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
  • The Green Door Store, 2-4 Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Brighton Train Station, Brighton BN1 4FQ, England, Monday 26th November 2018, 7.00pm (+ support t.b.c.) – information here and here
  • Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M1 1DF, England, Wednesday 28th November 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
  • The Hare & Hounds, 106 High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7JZ, England, Thursday 29th November 2018, 7.30pm (+ support t.b.c.) – information here and here
  • The Hug & Pint, 171 Great Western Road, Glasgow, G4 9AW, Scotland, Friday 30th November 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

(December 2018)

  • The Cumberland Arms, James Place Street, Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear, NE6 1LD, England, Saturday 1st December 2018, 7.30pm (+ support t.b.c.) – information here and here
  • Norwich Arts Centre, St. Benedict’s Street, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 4PG, England, Monday 3rd December 2018, 8.00pm (+ support t.b.c.) – information here and here
  • Rough Trade, Unit 3 Bridewell Street, Bristol, BS1 2QD, England, Tuesday 4th December 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
  • Clwb Ifor Bach, 11 Womanby Street, Cardiff, CF10 1BR, Wales, Wednesday 5th December 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

 

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August 2018 – upcoming London pop and rock gigs – The Mantis Opera, Bozo Zoo, The Butterfly Wheel and Imogen Bliss (25th August); Norwood & Brixton Foodbank fundraiser with Treasure Of Woe, Carl White and Apocalypse Jazz Unit (also 25th August)

15 Aug

The Mantis Opera + Bozo Zoo + The Butterfly Wheel + Imogen Bliss, 25th August 2018There are several reasons that I’ve been following the exploits of The Mantis Opera this year. One is the music: an illuminating synth-rock rush through cunningly orchestrated post-classical complexity and brainiac alternative pop, topped with similarly cerebral lyrics which slide fizzing, thinking ribbons through philosophy, logic and linguistic theory before binding them back into more down-to-earth life situations.

If this sounds hideously dry or snooty, it isn’t. This is simply music which is neither ashamed of its own cleverness, nor too self-absorbed or chilly to invite you along for the ride. They’re among an increasing number of newish, bumping-along-in-the-underground acts who share this kind of quirky enthusiasm and possess the requisite smarts and chops to back it up. Tom O.C. Wilson, Prescott, Thumpermonkey and Lost Crowns spring immediately to mind: bands and songwriters who see nothing wrong with turning out songs with the depth and twists of playful short stories, of compressed novels-of-ideas or of meandering Flann O’Brien-esque digressions.

As regards The Mantis Opera, I’ve been chucking around terms like “wide-awake brain music” and “avant-prog keeping watch from under a dream-pop veil” and I’m not going to drop those yet, although I might have to come up with a few more if the band are going to keep up regular performances.



 
The other reason that I’m keeping an eye on The Mantis Opera is that they tend to keep interesting gig company. Whether they’re good at being invited or are inordinately good at charming their way into lineups, the band seem to have a knack for fitting onto a wide variety of different bills, and this end-of-the-month gig at Paper Dress Vintage is no exception.

Two summers old, already pegged as “rust-bucket swing” and compared to “Mark E. Smith manning the Hot Five”, Bozo Zoo play rootsy jazz-folk and rhythm & blues on drums, double bass and comfortably sleazy sax. Hollering, theatrical vocalist and off-the-wall lyricist Mark Warren (who also handles the inevitable, ubiquitous ukulele) ensures that they tilt into a similar realm of bulging-vein vigour and twisted circus berserkery to that of The Tiger Lillies. A few decades ago he was bobbing about in the kind of lucky-dip underground bands that showed up on Org Records compilations: now he’s singing up budding cabaret gallimaufries of music hall songs and ditties about chess grandmasters. On top of all this, Bozo Zoo seem to have fused Spinal Tap with Schrödinger, via recent online mutterings about “a new drummer but we’ve also kept our drummer… but it ain’t a band with two drummers… but we have got two drummers… it’s complicated.”


 

Hailing from east London and extensively festooned with mysticism, The Butterfly Wheel aren’t quite the esoteric revelation that they’d like to make out. Plenty of their surface schtick – the Gothic theatrical trappings, the Early Music dirge-wails, the stripping away of Western pop tropes in favour of frowning middle-continent antiquity – is more than familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Dead Can Dance (or of the host of intense, tousled imitators DCD spawned over three decades). What is refreshing is the shifts underneath those surface. A female duo, their songs reshuffle and transform archetypes for an increasingly feminised new time. There’s the sense of old stone patriarchal gods and legends being chipped away at; of more hopeful alternatives being birthed out of the sea; of the stories sitting up and rewriting themselves. We’ll have to see where it leads.



 
From Camberwell and Coldharbour, Imogen Bliss reshuffles Eastern European folk songs and tufty pop covers on voice, mandolin and loop station. The examples below are Armenian and Balkan/Romani, sandwiching a reworked Cure hit: the latter may not sound a great deal different to those pixiedreamgirl uke songs which still bog down every other cinema advert, but Imogen sounds awake and illuminated rather than sun-drenched and casually dreamy. I’m guessing that she’s got other tricks up her sleeve…

https://soundcloud.com/imogenbliss/bella-sum
https://soundcloud.com/imogenbliss/love-cats
https://soundcloud.com/imogenbliss/ambee-dagheets
 
Paper Dress Presents…
The Mantis Opera + Bozo Zoo + The Butterfly Wheel + Imogen Bliss
Paper Dress Vintage Bar & Boutique,, 352a Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1HR, England
Saturday, 25 August 2018, 7.45pm – information here and here
 

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Norwood & Brixton Foodbank Fundraiser: Treasure Of Woe + Carl White + Apocalypse Jazz Unit, 25th August 2018On the same night, there’s this. Lovers of righteous noise, here’s your chance to sample some noise that’s a bit more righteous…

“London promoters Wrongpop and Chaos Theory have gotten together for a one-off special event to raise money for Norwood & Brixton Foodbank: some of the best new underground bands out there have agreed to bring you their sounds for this excellent cause, so it’ll be a phenomenal evening with extra positive vibes. 100% of ticket sales go to the charity.

“Formed from members of Long Slow Dissolve,The Love Me Tenders and Witchfist, Treasure Of Woe play stoner and psychedelic jams on guitar and drums. We’ve seen this duo doing their thing at The Facemelter last September and they just keep on recording their jams and releasing them online, so have a listen at the link and get down for the full live experience.


 
“Carl White are a guitar/drums experimental rock duo, originally formed in Brighton and now based in London. Over the years they’ve shared the stage with acts such as Nitkowski, Alpha Male Tea Party, Flies Are Spies From Hell, Witching Waves and The Mae Shi.They’re currently working on a new EP, from which there will be a single/video released in the next couple of months.


 
“Apocalypse Jazz Unit were started in 2013 by Rick Jensen as a recording project, after nearly three years of not making music. After numerous albums, Rick recruited some new and old musician buddies and started playing live. AJU quickly went from a small group to an over-the-top collective of psycho improvisers, with up to seventeen members at any one time. To date, they have released over seventy albums and have played a ton of gigs. AJU harnesses the spiritual fire of free-jazz of the ‘60s, mixed with a bit of disco when the mood takes them. Always high-energy and with a heavy sense of humour, AJU can easily swing from delicate and sombre, to full-blast horn mayhem.”


 
Wrongpop & Chaos Theory Music Promotions present:
Norwood & Brixton Foodbank Fundraiser: Treasure Of Woe + Carl White + Apocalypse Jazz Unit
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Saturday 25th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
 

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August 2018 – husk, rime and lanterns – a double dose of Jack Hayter in a Gravesend lightship (18th August)

14 Aug

I like the idea of a mobile arts venue. A seabound one is even better. LV21, a forty-metre decommissioned former lightship, once kept other ships from foundering on the rocks along the Kentish coast. Now it’s a floating art space and performance facility, moving intermittently between Thames estuary towns. Although it’s been resting at a long-term Gravesend mooring since summer 2016, LV21 still fits the measure for art-on-the-move (while its sister vessel, LV18, performs a similar function at a similar mooring up the coast at Harwich).

International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend @ LV21, 18th August 2018

Wherever it happens to be at the time, LV21 opens up in full each summer for the overlapping International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend and International Lighthouse Heritage Weekend, allowing visitors to explore the vessel and immerse themselves in lightship and lighthouse history from around the world. Also on offer at the event this year – this weekend – are lessons in tying sailor’s knots, a soldering and radio workshop (build your own pocket amplifier and speaker) and Nicola Pollard of stripped-down drama company Up The Road Theatre inviting discussion for the next UTR production, ‘Peril At Sea’ (set to explore “stories, memories, myths and songs of smuggling, shipwrecks and survival” and to tour around English coastal towns including Lowestoft, Portsmouth and Wells-next-the-Sea).

Jack Hayter @ ILLW 2018, Gravesend, 18th August 2018Of course, it’s music rather than knots that’s attracting my interest. Also on hand is Jack Hayter – wandering multi-instrumentalist, onetime Hefner member, ex-Dollboy-er, Ralegh Long and Papernut Cambridge collaborator; the writer and performer of memorable contemporary folk songs and a relatively recent new Gravesend resident. He has two interesting – and very different – nautical music productions going on in the bowels of the ship.

The first of these is ‘Flashes & Occultations’, a sonic installation in the generator room comprising “a seventy-seven-minute-long sonic improvisation on lighthouse life.” It was originally released by London indie label Where It’s At Is Where You Are in 2017 as part of their ‘Seven@77‘ compilation, on which it loomed massively over the thirteen other pieces (each of them clocking in at a measly seventy-seven seconds). In typically dry and witty fashion, Jack describes it as a salvage job on a foolhardy, ambitious effort to sidestep the requested seventy-seven-minute pedal steel improvisation in favour of an attempt to make “a transient sound sculpture from the identification patterns of distant lighthouses, buoys and light vessels; to convert their flashes and occultations into small voltages using telescopes, light-sensitive resistors and photodiodes, then to use those derived signals to trigger samples and control analogue synths. I was overambitious and my experiments were largely a technical failure. I also got cold and muddy while recording foghorns. Worse still, those supposedly unique and exciting light patterns often turned out to be “one flash every twenty seconds” or “red occulting thrice every minute on a Tuesday. Then I ran out of time.”

Salvaging the project wreckage, Jack returned to the original brief – improvising on pedal steel around field recordings, stirring in documentary dialogue, eight-bit synth pads and calling in a few friends and favours to obtain further ingredients: poetry, wordless harmony singing, harmonium drones and electronic oscillator. Despite his disclaimers, he came up with an effective, charming piece – at different points lulling, humorous and lyrically haunting – which absolutely deserves its second life amongst the Gravesend solenoids and gauges, where Jack claims he might play along with it “from time to time” on live fiddle. Here’s a short excerpt with accompanying video (filmed up at the Firth of Forth) – also, if you’re curious but can’t make it down to LV21 this Saturday, here’s the whole piece in audio.


 
Jack’s second musical contribution of the day is the one-off free live gig he’s performing in the ship (on deck? in the hold?) during the evening, in which he’s going to be performing “a set of my songs and stories which will loosely follow the river from Deptford down to Gravesend finishing up at Margate, with diversions.” Here’s where you get to see Jack in the raw – a rangy, weatherbeaten feller with a voice as chewed-up and resilient as an ancient poster still clinging onto a seafront fence. His recent album, ‘Abbey Wood‘, is one of 2018’s under-the-radar triumphs, a compelling song collection recorded in defiantly threadbare folk fashion but with infusions of avant-garde turn-up-and-play instrumentation. Its ace in the hole, however, is Jack’s songwriter vision. As ever, he writes with a documentarian’s timing and eye for sparse, telling detail; with a poet’s knack for sifting detritus and forgotten trash to find significance; and with a determination to tell stories from those broad, deliberately ignored margins of society which actually make up its overlooked majority.

Jack’s songbook includes tales of post-war slump and of the rural working class swept into conflict; the hopes and dreams of sewage workers; the luckless POWs sunk with the SS Andora Star; the fumblings of early love under the shadow of the Cold War. Crucially – and despite his sharp, assured literacy – he always writes these from the inside and on the level, rather than as booky preachings from above. These are stories about people on lean means, living within strung-together moments: a compassionate, sometimes subtly angry cinema of life’s grain outside the slick and aspirational. They vouch and voice for the itinerate, the sidelined; the workers who just get on with it; the kids with foggy futures stirred and impelled by vast indifferent forces.

Jack’s delivery of these tales, meanwhile, is battered, warm, inclusive, strangely dignified, and mesmeric. Check out an earlier review I did of one of Jack’s previous live performances; or have a dip into the selection of tracks below.


 
Jack Hayter @ International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend 2018
Light Vessel 21, (currently moored at) St Andrews Quay, Royal Pier Road, Gravesend, Kent DA12 2BD, England
Saturday 18 August 2018
• ILLW full event duration: 12.00pm-11.00pm
• Flashes & Occultations installation: 12.00pm-4.00pm
• Jack Hayter free live set: 7.00pm-11.00pm
– free event – information here, here, here and here
 

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August 2018 – upcoming gigs – Bauhaus’ David J plays solo in London and Wellingborough (25th & 26th August)

13 Aug

Peter Murphy tour with David J, 2018This week, half of goth-rock godfathers Bauhaus – in this case, sculpted singer/self-styled “myriad of colours” Peter Murphy and bass player David J – embark on the latest of their intermittent reunions: the Ruby Celebration Tour, which commemorates the original band’s fortieth anniversary (and on which they’ll perform the whole of their 1980 debut album ‘In the Flat Field’, ending up with a crowd-pleasing encore of Bauhaus classics).

Sprawling sonorously across several months in New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the UK, the tour’s probably already old news if you’re a committed member of the eager bat-chasing hordes, but full dates are available here if you want them. What you might have missed is that, in parallel to the tour, David J. is playing a couple of special solo shows.

David J, 2018 (photo © Circle23)

David J, 2018 (photo © Circle23)

Soft-spoken and thoughtful, David’s been regarded as one of the peacekeepers within Bauhaus’ sometimes belligerent emotional ferment, ameliorating the ongoing turbulence and “psychodrama” between Murphy and restless guitarist Daniel Ash. He was also a prime contributor to the oft-underestimated intellectual weight of the band, weaving references to Zen Buddhism, funk, art and architecture into the dark, dank, post-punk shape-throwing.

Yet aside from Bauhaus (and regardless of various reunions), he’s made a multi-faceted post-band career for himself, taking in sculpted noise, drama scoring, playwriting and fine art as well as songwriting. In addition to solo music, this has included work with The Jazz Butcher and Amanda Palmer; with Dutch downtempo trio Strange Attractor; with original Bauhaus art movement member René Halkett; and in particular with his fellow Northampton occultist Alan Moore (initially through the macabre campfire singalong of The Sinister Ducks, then a ‘V for Vendetta’ tie-in EP, and most recently and rewardingly via five albums of intricate words-and-noise psychogeographic “workings” as members of The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, digging up and expounding on weird history on location).

David J, 25th August 2018Both the tour with Murphy and the solo dates coincide with the early September reissue of David’s second solo album, ‘Crocodile Tears and The Velvet Cosh’. Initially released in 1985 (shortly before David re-engaged with a Murphy-less Bauhaus lineup to form alt-pop pioneers Love & Rockets) it was part of a determined move to shed the cloying Bauhaus image. Its bright semi-acoustic pop sound (with David comfortably swapped over to guitar and fronting) and its assured singer-songwriter stance had more in common with the songs of Aztec Camera or the deft wit of the Postcard Record bands, simultaneously freeing up and revealing the genuine breadth of his influences and ideas. He now remembers it as “a personal pastoral favourite… the album that really set the tone for all of my future solo endeavours.”


 
David J, 26th August 2018Of the two shows, the London performance looks like being a relatively straightforward affair. The truly committed and intrigued will need to make a pilgrimage the following day – up to the Midlands and to Wellingborough, where David will be playing a special acoustic show in Bauhaus’ original stomping ground Beck Studios, in which the band recorded much of their early work).

A limited-capacity event (with a boutique price tag), it’ll focus on songs spanning David’s career as well as songs originally recorded at Beck, and will also feature a live interview conducted by Andrew Brooksbank (author of ‘Bauhaus – Beneath The Mask’) and a Q&A session with the audience, with the whole event being recorded and filmed for later release.

Dates:

  • The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Islington, London, N1 0XT, England, Saturday 25th August 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
  • ‘Back to Beck’ @ Beck Studios, 2 Gisburne Road, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, NN8 4EE, England, Sunday 26th August 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here

 

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August 2018 – upcoming London folk gigs – Nest Collective’s Campfire Club shows – Åkervinda and Night (17th August); Gasper Nali and Ellie Ford (also 17th August); London Contemporary Voices (24th August); Alabaster dePlume and Luna Silva (31st August)

12 Aug

Here’s the second set of August’s Nest Collective Campfire Club open air park/garden/playground shows…

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Another pair of simultaneous Campfire concerts are happening on 17th August, the first of which features Scandinavian vocal quartet Åkervinda and Nepali folk band Night.

“Iris Bergcrantz, Lise Kroner, Linda Bergström and Agnes Åhlund – the four singers of Åkervinda – take pride in their original and modern interpretation of the traditional folksongs of Scandinavia. The group’s name is inspired by a Swedish wildflower whose roots spread far and wide like rivers under the ground. Like the flower, gracefully entwining melodies, rock-solid groove, and ever intriguing harmonies will take root in your mind. Like the flower, they will be impossible to remove.

“Jazz singers at heart, the young women of Åkervinda share a deep love of folk music. Through improvisation, the group gives new life to traditional folk songs and stories of women throughout the ages. In 2014 they released their debut album “Kära Mor” (“Dear Mother”) and has been touring in Sweden, Denmark, the US and Canada since. Åkervinda have performed at Aarhus Vocal Festival, Malmö Arena, Hillerød Folk Festival and various folk festivals in Sweden (as well as museums and venues in Toronto, New York and Chicago) and collaborations include work with the Swedish folk musician Jens Ulvsand, the Canadian fiddle virtuoso Jaron Freeman-Fox and the internationally-renowned Swedish trio Nordic.

 
“Reworking Nepali traditions into “stunning new soundscapes” (‘Making Tracks’), Night is a Kathmandu-based folk band formed in 2006, with members coming together from different musical backgrounds. The band focuses on reviving lost and endangered Nepali instruments, on creating new sounds rooted in collective Nepali heritage and on reintroducing said music and instruments to a world audience.

The people, places and cultures of Nepal have been Night’s greatest inspiration. Most of the songs are composed “in the field” where the band stays with people in villages. After living with a melody, a song or a drum rhythm over a period of time, they slowly start sensing its deeper meaning; and, through developing their own compositions, try to express and share this understanding with others.”

 
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The second of the two 17th August concert features Malawian roots musician Gasper Nali and Brightonian folk harpist/singer-songwriter Ellie Ford.

“Performing “simple but joyous… totally infectious” music (‘Songlines’), Gasper Nali plays a Babatoni – a three-metre one-stringed home-made bass guitar – with an empty bottle and a stick, and makes the most beautiful and catchy original Afro-beats possible. Gasper is a one-man-band, with the Babatoni, cow-skin kick drum and very catchy tunes. He is absolutely unlike anything else. It’s super Malawian roots, it’s very upbeat and incredibly danceable! Or – as a Bandcamp fan nicely put it: “Gasper is a one man party! It’s completely impossible to stop moving – and just as impossible to stop smiling!”

 
“Ellie Ford is an alternative folk artist whose expressive vocals are accompanied by her percussive harp playing and eloquent songwriting. Her combination of classical and modern musical styles – of the serene with the guttural – makes for a captivating solo performance. With a debut album release under her belt and a second album to follow in 2018, Ellie Ford is forging her own path as an alternative musician and performer.”

 
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On 24th August, utility choir London Contemporary Voices deliver the second of their two Campfire concerts this year. Suppliers of “session singers, backing vocalists, choristers, beatboxers and a cappella entertainment”, LCV are an in-demand studio-and-live chorus who spend much of their time working with pop and dance artists, providing music for corporate events or singing “choireeoke”; but in between these engagements they host their own events or pursue more unorthodox projects. Beside their previous 2018 Campfire event earlier in the season, the latter have recently included providing a soundbath for Folkestone’s experimental Profound Sound festival and staging a celebration of female songwriters at Union Chapel back in May.

 
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The last of the August concerts comes on 31st August, and features spoken-word/instrumental polymath Alabaster DePlume and trilingual folk/jazz/pop musician Luna Silva.

”From Manchester, now based in London, Gus Fairbairn – better known as Alabaster DePlume – is a performer, writer and musician. A saxophonist with an unusual tone (reminiscent of Ethopian free-jazz legend Getatchew Mekurya), Alabaster collaborates with members of the folk and jazz scenes of London, Bristol and Manchester. He uses music and spoken word to portray sentiments, often contradictory, that together evoke a new feeling. Whether in recording, writing or performance, his work has an emphasis on inclusion, encouragement and sincerity (and was recently described on Radio 3 as being “cheerfully uneasy”).

Since 2011 Alabaster has produced three albums on Manchester label Debt Records, toured Europe as a solo performer, produced short films, and written/performed a play with circus-aerial in Dublin. His latest album, ‘Peach’, was produced by Paddy Steer, and accompanies a short film called ‘I Feel Good’ directed by Melodie Roulaud. He also regularly presents a series of combined arts events celebrating both his and others’ work.

 
“Daughter of an English actress, a Spanish circus performer, and raised in France Luna Silva is a daughter of the world, singing in three languages and influenced by the cultures she has come across in her travels. In a world that is increasingly connecting, communicating and cooperating; Luna Silva’s music is deeply resonant. Her music is a mixture of contemporary music and traditional musics of this world (the arrangements touching on Eastern European folk, English folk, straight pop and Congolese jazz) but above all one feels a love for creativity. Accompanied by her ukulele (or a quartet also including guitar, double bass and percussion) she takes us on a journey of our own – an acoustic set with sass.”


 
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Full dates:

  • Campfire Club: Åkervinda + Night – Lumpy Hill Adventure Playground, 15 Market Road, Lower Holloway, London, N7 9PL, England, Friday 17th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Gasper Nali + Ellie Ford – Phytology, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, Middleton Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9RR, England, Friday 17th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: London Contemporary Voices return! – Glengall Wharf Garden, 64 Glengall Road, Peckham, London, SE15 6NF, England,Friday 24th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Alabaster dePlume + Luna Silva – Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton Street, Shoreditch, London, E1 5AR, England, Friday 31st August 2018, 7.00pm – information here

More Campfire Club shows to follow in September…
 

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August 2018 – upcoming London pop & rock gigs – Loop Pedal Lunacy with Steve Strong, Fetherstone, Alex Taylor, Sam Martin and She, Robot (8th August); plus a rare free Silvery acoustic show (10th August)

3 Aug

An evening of pop-looping at Paper Dress; and the return of some London art-pop rascals…

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First, the loopfest…

Loop Pedal Lunacy, 8th August 2018

“Steve Strong is a one man arsenal of beats, tapped guitar and lush textural melodies. His music is as witheld as it is grandiose, as skeletal as it is layered, equal parts shimmering and pulsing. It glimmers, swings and explodes in all the right places, sliding gracefully from one section to another, played as tightly as it is loose and free. Steve’s ability to bridge the gap between technical ability and captivation is completely instinctual, tattoed onto his musical consciousness like the art on his body. His music seems to encompass many different styles without feeling contrived or forced; every strand of inspiration in Steve’s music is carefully placed and melted. This music will not be held down!

 
“As She, Robot, award winning loop artist Suzy Condrad is a seasoned performer and authentic underground artist who has written and self-produced three albums and established herself as a leader in her field, winning the title of Boss Looping UK Champion in 2011. She effortlessly juggles instruments and genres with a dynamic and arresting one-woman show which has amazed and delighted audiences from Shambala to Boomtown Fair, Bearded Theory to Beautiful Days. Dancehall, ska, doo-wop, folk and electro collide with blistering beats and haunting, sublime vocal gymnastics to take you on an ever-looping journey which balances real-time loop juggling against timeless songwriting. Edgy, raw, beatbox and bass driven sensual sounds, layered to perfection, create a mesmerising performance which is powerful yet ethereal. Woman meets machine in a musical maelstrom that will make your head spin, your spirit lift and your feet move.

 
“Already compared by reviewers to the likes of Bill Withers, John Martyn and Jeff Buckley, Bristol-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumental loop pedal artist Alex Taylor is one of the shining lights of the acoustic scene and a troubadour of world-class standing. Drawing on varied influences from a wide musical spectrum, Alex’s style splices elements of soul, nu-folk and electronica to place his shape-shifting voice and dextrous, original acoustic guitar playing firmly in the spotlight. Touring extensively, Alex has notched up hundreds of gigs, sharing stages with such luminaries as Jack Savoretti, Roachford and Michael Kiwanuka: a festival favourite, he recently headlined the BBC stage at Bristol’s Harbour Festival, and has played many other stages including Cambridge Folk Festival and Cheltenham Jazz Festival. His critically acclaimed debut album features performances from members of The Invisible, Newton Faulkner’s band, Portishead and Massive Attack.

 
“Heavily influenced by her ninety-four-year-old artistic grandmother, Aussie-born Fetherstone brings together the quirky sounds of electronic pop and the swooping melodies of folk, and combines them with her emotive reflective story-telling. Based in London since 2015, 2017’s ‘Debut’ EP was produced and engineered by London native Harry Tarlton (Kobalt, Union J, Stooshe, WarnerUK), with the last single Two Hands On Deck hand-picked by Newton Faulker to feature on the Richer Unsigned record store day Vinyl compilation, April 2018. Fetherstone’s live shows captivate audiences using a loop/effects pedal, percussion and electronic drums. Recent performances include The Camden Assembly (supporting for Frida Sundemo), Richer Unsigned Live at Melomania, TV Nights Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s, The Servant Jazz Quarters (supporting Ella Janes), Live at The Bedford and The Troubadour (supporting The Modern Strangers).

 
“Since an early age, Sam Martin has written and performed his own music around the UK, both supporting and headlining on nation wide tours. In 2010 he recorded his first independent solo EP and has since recorded three studio EPs which have gained a mass following in the UK and Europe as well as Australia and North America. With a vocal/guitar/loop-pedal musical style incorporating blues, jazz and alternative soul, Sam’s vocal and instrumental ability is testament to both his inspirations and musical evolution.”

https://youtu.be/G5oTRgBKv3Y
 
Loop Pedal Lunacy – A Night of Live Looping (featuring Steve Strong, Fetherstone, Alex Taylor, Sam Martin and She, Robot)
Paper Dress Vintage Bar & Boutique,, 352a Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1HR, England
Wednesday 8th August 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here
 

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Meanwhile, the coming week also sees the first gig in a year for London art/glam/pile-on rockers Silvery. Snatching an early night slot before the late-night jazz funk at Jazz After Dark, they’re going for a repeat performance (of sorts) of last year’s free Soho acoustic gig: this time, in order to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their debut album ‘Thunderer & Excelsior’.

Simultaneously effete and rowdy, Silvery are a wonky London pop sense made flesh, sounding as if they’ve sprung from the same zigzagging suburban allotments-of-weird which also brought up The Kinks, The Monochrome Set, Cardiacs and The Stranglers. They’re more urchin-esque than Franz Ferdinand, but less leery than Blur. They’re an erudite and wayward Carnaby Roxy; the Dodgers to Bowie’s Fagin; and as rocking goes, they’re only “garage” if said garage had started life as a spooky Victorian stable block.

In their live heyday, Silvery would dress up as Bow Street Runners and fill the capital’s little venues with sweat and joy; these days, their gigs are few and far between, so make the most of this one. If it’s anything like the last time, it’ll be just the two Silveries – Simon Harris and front guy James Orman – thwacking out the old stuff on 12-string acoustic guitar and piano. Below, to get you in the mood, there’s a couple of full-bore electric ‘Thunderer…’ excerpts plus a teaser for a forthcoming film they’ve been making.

 
Silvery: Live Acoustic
Jazz After Dark, 9 Greek Street, Soho, London, W1D 4DQ, England
Friday 10th August 2018, 8.00pm – free event – information here
 

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August 2018 – more Woodburner world-acoustica sessions at Dalston Eastern Curve Gardens – Solomon’s Garden, The Hungry Mothers and Miranda Joy (7th August); Sannie Fox, Harvey Causon and Gus Harvey (14th August); Whiskey Moon Face, Meïkhâneh and Tommy Ashby (21st August); Gnawa Blues All Stars, James Riley and Michael Sebastian (28th August)

2 Aug

More outdoor summer Woodburner gigs at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, as the season moves into its third and penultimate month.

Here’s what they say they’re offering…

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The 7th August show features neo-soul collective Solomon’s Garden, Brighton-based Americana band The Hungry Mothers, and the singer-songwriter Miranda Joy.

“Solomon’s Garden is a collective of three university friends who came together to make music with cleverly worded and thought-provoking lyrics, and soulful, catchy, head-bopping beats. After spontaneously releasing their first song ‘Sand Dunes’ in January 2016, the group had an incredible reaction from the general public and within a short period of time the song hit its first thousand plays. It was then that the group knew they were on to something special. Two years, one hiatus and three EPs later the band continues to thrive as a dynamic four piece. Between landing a slot at Latitude festival ‘17, being chosen for BBC Introducing’s record of the week, and becoming a favourite with Sofar Sounds London; the band are fast becoming a name to be recognised on the emerging music scene, with a distinct and resonant sound that continues to evolve.

 
“Producers of feelgood Americana residing within the south-east of the UK, The Hungry Mothers immediately began winning fans since their birth last year as a four-piece comprised of warming harmonies, laid-back roots and country blues. Their debut single Tiger Song (released on At The Helm Records) is the confident and mature start for a band who are inviting everyone on their journey.

 
“Miranda Joy is a twenty-two-year-old singer-songwriter currently based in London. She performs her meaningfully-written songs with a powerful and soulful voice with moving piano accompaniment. She has performed at many venues, festivals and events, including the Vortex Jazz Club, The Village Underground, Rye International Jazz and Blues festival, the Great Escape Festival and Nasty Women UK. Last year one of her original songs, The Fall, was featured on BBC1’s coverage of the NFL Super Bowl highlights. Currently, she is continuing to perform at venues across the UK and working on releasing her first EP.”

 
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The 14th August show features South African blues artist Sannie Fox, electronic/jazz from Harvey Causon, and trip hop act Gus Harvey.

“Sannie Fox is a singer and guitarist who has released two critically acclaimed albums and will release her third studio album ‘My Soul Got Stranger’ this year. With her voracious voice, and her fingers to her electric guitar, Fox sways across an evolving sonic tapestry of desert blues, soul and psychedelic rock sounds. Last decade, Fox formed the blues-rock 3-piece Machineri and released a self-titled album in 2010; in 2015 she released her debut solo album ‘Serpente Masjien’. She has toured South Africa, the UK and Asia and is currently based between the UK and South Africa.

 

“Calm and understated, Bristol’s Harvey Causon is turning heads with his deft take on contemporary R&B and percussive electronica, and with the powerful, brooding vocal that sounds far more world-wearied than his twenty years. After moving to Bristol last year, Harvey quickly released his ‘Introspect’ EP’, a collection of songs that he had been sitting on for a while. Eclectic but polished, the stand out song from the release, ‘Systems’ was given a remix from rising hip hop duo Cabrakid (earning Harvey an appearance at Cabra’s support slot with Loyle Carner after the rapper heard the track).

“In October, Harvey released his single ‘Frisson’ with local Bristol label Leisure Records: ‘Worn You’, his most recent release with production collaborator Gabriel Gifford, was playlisted by Radio 1 as the BBC Introducing Track of the Week and added to the Burberry and Radio 1 Spotify playlists. With nods to other contemporary artists the ambient piano ballad has a nervous energy but its dub tinged rhythm, clever lyrical content and fragile yet soothing vocal set it apart. Having already played sold-out shows supporting Tokio Myers, Puma Blue and Porches as well as Dot to Dot and 2000 Trees festivals, the summer bookings are shaping up to be just as imposing with The Great Escape, The Downs Festival and All Points East all in the pipeline. His impressive live set features both Gabriel Gifford and drummer Ben Toon.

 
“Gus Harvey is a London-born soul singer with roots in hip hop and jazz. This August she releases debut EP ‘? History (1 of 4)’ on her own label. Her first single – Witches – was pure hip hop and received radio acclaim from DJs including Lauren Laverne and Nemone on BBC Radio 6 Music, as well as being Clash Music’s Track of the Day. The new EP exhibits four different styles; acoustic soul, jazz-hip hop, trip hop and bi gbeat (from collaborations with Audiobullys’ Tom Dinsdale). ‘? History’ is Harvey’s self-portrait and DIY protest against an industry squashing emerging artists into one genre. As sole mistress of all her ships, Harvey creates her visuals with close friend and London visionary Netti Hurley. Tonight she performs a unique, stripped acoustic soul set especially for Woodburner.”

 
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The 21st August show features transcontinental jazz-folkers Whiskey Moon Face, Persia/Mongolia/Eastern Europe-influenced folk trio Meikhaneh and sessioneer-turned-ancestral-folkie Tommy Ashby.

“The result of a thousand drunken nights, countless dreamy days, and years of musical adventuring, Whiskey Moon Face take you on a voyage into a bohemian underworld which you never knew existed. Born into a puddle of whiskey beneath a stark winter moon and raised by cold winds, schooled in the warming spirits and hungry for more, Whiskey Moon Face manage a natural, graceful sound built from many ports. Always innovating and improvising with stark originality, Louisa Jones’ troupe of underground musicians play with a virtuosity you could never expect. Songs which speak of the unspeakable, with understated humour, captivating storytelling and a transcendent spirituality. ‘Folk Radio UK’ compared them to “having been at one of those wild and joyous youthful parties in somebody else’s parents’ house that you’ll remember for years.”

 
“Meïkhâneh’s compositions are fed by imagination, improvisation and traditional music from Europe, Mongolia and Iran. The luminous and captivating voices carry the power of East European singings, the aerial melodies of the great spaces, as well as the depth of the khöömii, Mongolian overtone singing. One can hear traveling cords recalling the steppes of Asia and Andalusia. The chiseled rhythms of percussion draw on the Persian tradition. Meïkhâneh takes us to the heart of a music without borders that caresses the soul. Its name borrowed from Persian poetry means the «House of Intoxication». We let ourselves be carried…

 

“Tommy Ashby’s childhood was always going to be musical. Travelling the country playing guitar in his father’s traditional blues band and raised on the Scottish pub singaround culture, his initial musical experiences were immersive and natural. His teens were spent pouring over his parents record collections of American songwriters such as Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and Jeff Buckley. The eclectic mix of American roots, blues and country, combined with his Scottish folk roots, all seeped into his music.

“After acquiring a PhD focussed on studying and modelling the human perception of sound, Tommy cut his teeth behind the scenes as a session musician for the likes of Nina Nesbitt and Holly Macve, toured the UK and Europe as support act for Rhodes and Tom Speight as well as playing a number of headline sell-out shows in London this year including events curated by Communion, Never Fade and the Southbank Centre. His debut EP, produced by Chris Bond (Ben Howard) was self-released in late November 2016 and entered at No.5 in the iTunes singer-songwriter chart. His new EP, Restless Love, was recorded and mixed with Grammy award winner Sam Okell in his home studio near the wild North Cornwall coast.”

 
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The 28th August show features Moroccan guimbri sensations Gnawa Blues All Stars, Anglo-American guitarist James Riley, and improvisation/loop wizard Michael Sebastian.

“Simo Lagnawi is an ambassador of Gnawa culture in the UK. This charismatic creator is the leader of Gnawa Blues All Stars and has featured on BBC World service, CNN World, BBC 3, Vox Africa, & many more radio shows and magazines around the world. He has performed at a host of festivals including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, Latitude and Boom Town. Playing traditional Gnawa music from Morocco, this sacred trance music forms the core of his work with his bands Electric Jalaba, Gnawa Griot, and Gnawa Blues Allstars. Simo continuously pushes new boundaries fusing Gnawa with music from countries such as Gambia, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, India, Japan, Venezuela and the Caribbean. Look out for special guest musicians playing with the band!

 
Born of a transatlantic relationship, James Riley grew up in south-east London listening to the folk and soul sound of ‘70s America and wrote his first melody at the age of four. His first guitar, acquired at the age of nine, became the tool for surviving the tumult of a nowhere place, and helped James find somewhere he felt he belonged. In his early twenties, he took off, alone once again, hitchhiking and busking through Europe from Amsterdam to Istanbul, writing songs along the way. Back in the UK, these songs became a band, but eventually James had to shed another skin, and disembarked in Nashville, Tennessee. Here he found his producer and they set about making the album which had travelled with him to his maternal homeland, where it could finally get free.

 
South African-born, Edinburgh-educated, and living in London, Michael Sebastian is a musician and loop-artist who improvises to uplift the capital. Whenever possible, Sebastian is on the streets of London, improvising with a loop-pedal, a mic and a bright pink guitar. He will attest that this has been the most important part of his musical education, and has taught him to speak to people through his instrument. he creates music from a broad range of experience and styles. His affinity for groove and feel allows for conflicting styles to fluidly co-exist, feeling human and natural. His most recent album, ‘Kayanda’ demonstrates him harnessing live, improvised looping onto record. After developing the recording software himself, Sebastian went into a shed in the country for two weeks to improvise an album, and came out with fourteen tracks. The album is written with the sensibilities of modern dance and electronic music, and retains the freedom, rawness and depth of world music and jazz, while still creating melodies that are hard to forget.”

 
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All events are at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, 13 Dalston Lane, Dalston, London, E8 3DF, England on Tuesday evenings. Dates below:

  • Solomon’s Garden + The Hungry Mothers + Miranda Joy – Tuesday 7th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Sannie Fox + Harvey Causon + Gus Harvey – Tuesday 14th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Whiskey Moon Face + Meïkhâneh + Tommy Ashby – Tuesday 21st August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Gnawa Blues All Stars + James Riley + Michael Sebastian – Tuesday 28th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

 

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August 2018 – upcoming London gigs – flexi-clectica at Apple Tree: The Live Lounge Vol II with Rudi Douglas, J. Aria, Awkward Ndure, DJ Sonikku, Martell O’Neill, Daryl Fox-Huxley and DJ Kevin Morosky (2nd August)

31 Jul

Apple Tree: The Live Loung Vol. II, 2nd August 2018Since its launch earlier this year, broad-based London music-and-performance event Apple Tree has set itself a bold framework. Curated by tireless promoter and club personality Mark-Ashley Dupé and by cross-disciplinary designer/film-maker Samuel Douek, its Live Lounge event is dedicated to celebrating LGBTQIA musicians and artists from across the city (that’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex and asexual/allies, for those having trouble keeping up with those ever-burgeoning inclusive acronyms). It’s also happily intersectional in both intent and in entertainment. The convergence of queerness and blackness already seems to be a specialty, offsetting the compressive grinding of racism and the bristling aggression of homophobes by providing a stage for some fiery and assertive performers.

If this is starting to sound too specialised, too academic, or too much like a sexual/political cul-de-sac, I should reign things in a bit. In fact, the backbone of the debut Apple Tree evening back in June (which I only caught up and heard about recently, several months after the event) seems to have been electric/eclectic soul, provided by singer-songwriters Miggy Dela Rosa, Albert Gold and Awkward Ndure. Gay electro-acoustic composer Daniel McBride was also on hand, his work bridging that gap between the capital’s young classical scene, its queer-arts scene and the electronic music continuum which unites (in both work and play) pop, dance culture and high-art experimentalism. Bringing the words was topical poet and fervent discursor Black Ops Poetry; bringing the costumes and personae was queer cabaret sensation Rhys Holis (performer of Rhys’ Pieces and founder of Dalston cabaret night Queefy); and bringing damn near everything was operatic/discursive costumed electro-acoustic performance artist Oberon White (who considers himself “part of an eclectic tradition incorporating shamans, clowns, automata, cyborgs and drag artists”).

In other words, Apple Tree’s shaping up to be an event that’s equally comfortable with party pop and far-out high art concepts, unifying them through a flexible, diverse queer lens. There aren’t that many places where you can see a happy, possibly camp singalong immediately followed by a text-spouting man dressed as a mythical Greek bird-god.

The upcoming second Apple Tree Live Lounge show at the beginning of August is perhaps a tad less adventurous than the debut was, but it’s all part of the ebb and flow, and comes packaged with dinner care of Shoreditch’s Hoi Polloi brasserie and a DJ set from photographer/film director Kevin Morosky. As for the performers, Awkward makes a return from the launch event with her Latin-tinged folk-soul – at least I think it’s her, since some of the publicity suggests that it might be Evan Williams from MTV teen comedy ‘Awkward’ (which in turn makes me feel as if I’m slipping down some rabbit hole of an involved in-joke). Assuming that I do have the right Awkward, here’s a clip of her performing with guitarist Sim Chappelle a couple of years ago. I’m on more solid ground with the billing for accomplished soul’n’stage singer Martell O’Neil (whose past and current work includes the travelling Motown revue ‘How Sweet It Is’); and for Daryl Fox-Huxley, the current/former guitarist for house-tinged indie pop act The Hook, now concentrating on solo work with a folk-pop base, “his own East London twist and lyrics to match” and probably at least a few other hints and approaches brought in from his abiding love for reggae, techno and techhouse.

 
Headliner Rudi Douglas is a onetime ‘X Factor’ contestant (he was in the 2006 series when he was nineteen) but don’t hold that against him, or allow it to constrain him. Instead, take a look at and have a listen to this – ‘He Won’t Swim In My Ocean’, a four-year-old but evergreen song which proves that Rudi doesn’t need the Cowell circus to help him make grand heartbursting pop, with a gay theme but a universal touch.

 
For this session, the more experimental kudos is provided by DJ Sonikku (who mashes ‘80s house into chiptune with the aid of the purloined and repurposed guts of Sega Mega Drive consoles) and even more so by Jacob Aria – a.k.a non-binary soundscaper J. Aria. Interested in “tension, desolation, morbidity and eroticism”, J. creates intricate, absorbing musical washes, beats and tapestries via sampler, turntable and voice in which hauntology, psychedelic ambience and hints of house engage in a spectral, full-bodied mysterious dance: a ghostly neighbourhood of percolating histories for “a world of heterotopic ‘otherness’, pushing senses of horror and psychosis within queerdom and the incidental beauty of the fractured”.

https://soundcloud.com/j_aria/pigs
 
Apple Tree Live presents:
Apple Tree – The Live Lounge – Vol. 2: Rudi Douglas + Jacob Aria + Awkward Ndure + DJ Sonikku + Martell O’Neill + Daryl Fox-Huxley + DJ Kevin Morosky
Miranda @ Ace Hotel London Shoreditch, 100 Shoreditch High Street, Shoreditch, London, E1 6JQ, England
Thursday 2nd August 2018, 6.00pm – information here and here
 

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October/November 2018 – upcoming gigs – XTC’s Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers (as TC&I) live in Swindon (29th October to 1st November)

30 Jul

On sale as of this morning… tickets for the closest to an XTC live reunion that you’re ever likely to get.

“The thirty-six-year wait is nearly over. After releasing their debut ‘Great Aspirations’ EP under the moniker TC&I ten months ago, songwriter and XTC co-frontman Colin Moulding and original XTC drummer Terry Chambers have announced a string of live dates in October. XTC’s Andy Partridge also announced the shows via Twitter: “Well I never, CM and TC playing live. They should have done it years ago.”

TC&I, 29th October to 1st November 2018

2018 marks the 40-year anniversary of XTC’s first studio album ‘White Music’. While XTC was founded in 1972, it wasn’t until 1979 that XTC had their first UK charting single. Moulding had written the first three charting singles (‘Life Begins at the Hop’, ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, and ‘Generals and Majors’). Chambers left the lineup in the 1980s, while Moulding continued his partnership with frontman Andy Partridge through the group’s dissolution in 2006.

The new collective will be playing an exclusive mini-residency at Swindon Arts Centre, consisting of four evenings – on 29th, 30th and 31st October and 1st November. Other dates may be added for the following month.“These dates are probably commensurate with our output thus far. We’re not going to do the usual promoters’ circuit. Besides it’s kind of special this way. Like a stationary West End show or something,” says Colin Moulding.

“Exciting times. Eighteen months ago I couldn’t see this happening – I’m as excited about these gigs as I was in 1973 playing our first gig at the Arts Centre Swindon as a seventeen-year-old Helium Kid, and the first time to be playing with Colin together on stage since San Diego,” says Terry Chambers.

 
XTC’s long-standing rhythm section will be joined by music veterans Steve Tilling on guitar and Gary Bamford on keyboards and guitar. This is not the first XTC encounter for multi-instrumentalist and session musician Tilling, the man behind Circu5, whose debut album ‘The Amazing Monstrous Grady’ featured a guest appearance from XTC guitarist Dave Gregory. Swindon musician Bamford has an extensive history of music writing, orchestrating, teaching and collaborating, including working with The Beautiful South to orchestrate twenty-five songs for the musical ‘The Slide’ and as bandleader for the show at their premiere performances. His debut album ‘Jadj’ was co-produced with Jim Barr (Portishead).

In addition to their new material as TC&I, Moulding and Chambers plan to play a selection of the songs from the XTC catalogue written by Colin, several of which have never been played live (due to the fact that the band stopped touring in 1982, not long before Chambers’ departure).”

Not sure who’s playing in support yet. Note that the Monday and Thursday dates are already sold out, so you’ll need to get a move on if you want to get a chance at attending one of the remaining two…

TC&I + support t.b.c.
Swindon Arts Centre, Swindon, Devizes Road, Old Town, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN1 4BJ, England
Monday 29th October to Thursday 1st November 2018, 7.45pm – information here and here
 

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August 2018 – upcoming London pop and rock gigs – Meat Candy, Mur-Man, Husband and Hotel (3rd August); Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster, Flies Are Spies From Hell and Maziac (also 3rd August)

29 Jul

Two for the first Friday in August…

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Paper Dress are putting on a show of relative unknowns.

Meat Candy + Mur-Man + Husband + Hotel, 3rd August 2018

A few years old and already hailed as “highly engaging and loud”, Meat Candy provide star-studded retrofitted space rock high on lysergic sherbet and amp buzz: chasing the jets of Interstellar Overdrive while sliding towards harder rock and heavy metal. While early Pink Floyd is definitely the template for their chugging, droning sense of wonder, there are aspects of Voivod and King’s X in there too, both in their clanging solidity and the sturdily-banked harmony vocals.



 
The guttural yelps of Mur-Man are the product of an even younger band, one who haven’t got past their first demo yet. It’s a smart little nugget, though: the joining of ‘60s garage rock and ‘80s Liverpool post-punk is a well worn root by now, but ever-capable of putting out new shoots. For this one, there’s an extra dusting of raga rock – well, close but no sitar. As for the subject matter… well, they might be north Londoners, but Mur-Man sound as if they’re rather be stateside unbuckling the Bible Belt, with their randy tragicomic tale of a twisted love triangle (a horny boy breaking a commandment while wishing he was actually breaking another one).

https://soundcloud.com/mur_man_music/christian-boys-demo
 
Similarly recent are Husband, who’ve only been in existence for a slim season. That said, singer Dharshika Ariyadasa’s a veteran who’s already served time in heavy-acoustic band Heaven’s Heathens, acclaimed London folk rockers Ghosts Of December and wall-of-noise rock balladeers Autumn Leaf Boy. In all of these, his heroic stature and presence and his remarkable baritone-to-falsetto voice proved a magnet for attention. Husband are new enough (this is only their second live show) that there’s nothing to share yet as regards exactly what Dharshika is doing now; so here’s something of what he did back then…

 
Opening proceedings are wistful folk-rockers Hotel: similarly new and elusive, although a clutch of Facebook videos suggest something somewhere between Boo Hewerdine and Neil Young. Judge for yourselves…

 
Paper Dress presents:
Meat Candy + Mur-Man + Husband + Hotel
Paper Dress Vintage Bar & Boutique,, 352a Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1HR, England
Friday 3rd August 2018, 7.45pm – information here and here

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Moving into louder and heavier territories, this month’s edition of Chaos Theory’s Facemelter night features a couple of their old favourites, one of whom are celebrating an anniversary.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster + Flies Are Spies From Hell + Maziac, 3rd August 2018

Post-metal stalwarts and Facemelter regulars Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster are celebrating ten years of playing and releasing music, taking in goth and prog and experimental rock atmospherics to build instrumental stews creating impressions of ravaged deserts, old sorting yards, tensions flaring. At this retrospective show at the Black Heart, they’ll perform a selection from across their career along with some previously unheard new music (for which all attendees will receive a free download code).

 
Flies Are Spies From Hell (who’ve played their own share of Facemelter shows) may be much jauntier than Tacoma Bridge Disaster, but both bands are storytellers without words. In the case of the Flies, they seem to have been on a fourteen-year mission to scour the glums out of post-rock clichés: their expansive instrumentals might maintain a little of that dour, hovering impression of bleakly glorious post-industrial landscapes (the kind I’ve just accused Tacoma of propagating) but if Tacoma illustrate spectacular polluted sunsets then the Flies represent a more hopeful sunrise. In addition to the basic post-rock moves, their own instrumentals seemingly quote everything from folk rock to house piano riffs, and somehow do so without making it all sound like a wacky polystylistic exercise. Instead, think of breakfast in a borderland, people from various walks of life or culture moving through and conversing.

 
Maziac are making their Facemelter debut at this gig. Pulling in former members of Manchester prog-metallers Phineas Gage, Canadian indie rockers Forgotten Fix and London screamos Knievel Genius, they’re the out-and-out dirtiest and heaviest band on the bill when they want to be (and the only one with vocals) but, paradoxically, they’re also the lightest. Behind the gnarly riffage and the blast beats, there’s a lot of power-pop honeycomb – they use something akin to The Wildhearts’ alleged wheeze of fusing sticky Cheap Trick melodies with gnarly Metallica amp savagery, decorating it liberally with tech-metal tricks and brief, perfectly placed instrumental fireworks.

A debut EP, ‘Parallels’ shows off well-developed songwriting skills to impressive effect. They don’t really seem to buy that much into the ornate and slightly solipsistic world of their billmates, but follow their own particular path: if Tacoma and Flies are urging you to stop and soak in a spectacular world, Maziac are busy powering out of the valley in order to get something done.


 
Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster + Flies Are Spies From Hell + Maziac
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 3rd August 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
 

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August 2018 – upcoming London folk gigs – Nest Collective’s Campfire Club shows – Kaia Kater and John McGrath (3rd August); Cath & Phil Tyler and Marisa Jack & Davy (3rd August); Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and Felix MB (9th August); Fellow Pynins and Jack & The Arrows (10th August)

28 Jul

More in the ongoing string of unamplified outdoor folk gigs in London parks and gardens, courtesy of Nest Collective’s Campfire Club.

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There are two simultaneous concerts on 3rd August, the first of which features “African-Canadian roots phenom” Kaia Kater and experimental folk guitarist John McGrath.

“Kaia Kater couldn’t have come on the scene at a better time. As a new generation takes the reins, American roots music is needed more than ever to remind us of the troubled pathways of our own history. Born of African-Caribbean descent in Québec, Kaia Kater grew up between two worlds: one her family’s deep ties to Canadian folk music in her Toronto home; the other the years she spent learning and studying Appalachian music in West Virginia. Her acclaimed debut album ‘Sorrow Bound’ (May 2015) touched on this divide, but her sophomore album ‘Nine Pin’ (May 2016) delved even further, and casting an unflinching eye at the realities faced by people of colour in North America every day. Her songs on Nine Pin are fueled by her rich low tenor vocals, jazz-influenced instrumentation, and beautifully understated banjo. They earned her a Canadian Folk Music Award in 2016, and they’ve got as much in common with Kendrick Lamar right now as they do with Pete Seeger.

“As a concept album, ‘Nine Pin’ weaves between hard-hitting songs that touch on modern issues like the Black Lives Matter movement (Rising Down, Paradise Fell) and more personal narratives speaking to life and love in the digital age (Saint Elizabeth). And while these larger stories are deftly crafted, this is really an album of moments. Kater’s a cappella voice speaking to the loneliness of a city in Harlem’s Little Blackbird while solo dance steps echo in the background, the muted hesitancy of Caleb Hamilton’s trumpet breaking the trance of Little Pink, the smoke of electric guitar that cuts through Saint Elizabeth, the wave-like ebb and flow of piano behind the plaintive love poem Viper’s Nest… All of these moments point to an artist wise beyond her years.

 
“John McGrath is an Irish guitarist, composer and author based in London. His music explores the boundaries of the ancient and modern as traditional elements meet improvisation and experimental tendencies. Rich harmonics, intricate finger-picking, static drones and glitches combine to glorious effect.”

 
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The second of the two 3rd August concerts features some neo-traditionalist groupings in the form of Cath & Phil Tyler and Marisa Jack & Davy.

“Cath & Phil Tyler play Anglo-American folk music using guitar, banjo, voice and fiddle. Cath was a member of the band Cordelia’s Dad in the 1990s when she lived in Massachusetts, USA. Phil (from Newcastle-upon-Tyne) has played in various folk, rock and ceilidh bands for many years. Coming together musically through a shared love of traditional narrative song, full voiced sacred harp singing and sparse mountain banjo, they have performed on stages as diverse as the Royal Opera House in London and a dank tower in the old city walls of Newcastle. Taking a more minimal approach to their material than some, they have been described as “one of the most compelling musical partnerships on the scene”, their music being “a highly concentrated and intimate musical experience that penetrates to the very rawest essence of folk tradition.”


 
“Bedford-based folk trio Marisa Jack & Davy formed in 2015 in order to play at the DIY shows and house concerts they were organising. A floor spot for Stick in the Wheel’s folk night on The Golden Hinde encouraged them to further explore British folk music and they were soon seduced by the music of Shirley Collins, The Young Tradition and Nic Jones. Their unconventional interpretation of the tradition is shaped by the harmonic blend of their three unique voices, acoustic guitar styles and their music backgrounds. Marisa Straccia is an illustrator and plaintive finger picking guitarist, Davy Willis a singer and artist from Tonbridge via L.A. and Jack Sharp is best known as the singer for psych rock band Wolf People. They also run a nomadic Bedford acoustic folk night called Mill Race Folk in various locations including an 18th century watermill, a museum, a community boat and a 15th century timber-framed market hall.”

 
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The 9th August concert features acousti-pop star Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and rising folk-pop sensation Felix MB.

“A veteran at thirty-two, Sam Duckworth has been releasing music under the moniker Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. for 12 years. His catalogue includes collaborations ranging from Baba Maal, to Shy Fx, Kate Nash to Jehst. It includes four top 40 singles, tow top 40 albums, a German Club Number 1 and a gold-certified plaque for the seminal ‘Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager’.

Having spent three recent years working under his own name, Duckworth returned to Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. work in January 2018 with a new album, ‘Young Adult’, which includes the Shy Fx collaboration “always.” Mastered by T Power, this is Duckworth back as a folk artist, but still keeping parts of the electronic experimentation of his “solo” work. Sam debuted a new band at his recent Village Underground show, hearalded by the Independent as a “triumphant return.”

 
“Growing up in Derbyshire amongst actors and musicians in his parents’ touring theatre company, Felix M-B began gigging in Derby, Nottingham and then across the UK; playing shows with the likes of Lorkin O’Reilly, Alasdair Roberts, Lucy Ward, Josh Wheatley, Daudi Matsiko, Joel Baker, The Slow Show, Monica Heldal, and Georgie. His latest EP ‘The Pipes’ (released on 10th March at a sold-out concert in London) saw Felix co-producing, recording the five-track record with Ben Walker in Brighton in December 2017. It is a particularly raw and intimate record, featuring elements of self-recording and the use of reel-to-reel tape.”

(I’ve had plenty to say about Felix previously…)


 
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The 10th August gig features Oregonian folk duoFellow Pynins and Oxford harmony-folk trio Jack & The Arrows.

“Fellow Pynins is a tender folk duo birthed out of years of traveling, farming, child-rearing, and touring as part of six-piece folk orchestra Patchy Sanders. Their songs tell of stories old, dreams of death, frolicking through pastures of sheep, and entering the chasms of the human experience. Their repertoire consists of original songs and traditional European ballads collected during their travels. Wielding clawhammer banjo, bouzouki, mandolin and guitar, Ian Van Ornum and Dani Aubert pour their hearts into the sounds of their whimsically-woven folk tales. These two will lift you up with their ridiculous stories and then transcend you into their emotive songs.

https://vimeo.com/210281565
 
Jack & The Arrows are a London-and-Oxford based trio with dashes of folk, Americana and blues and strong close-harmonies. Jack Durtnall, Joe Hasell and Edmund Jones met through a capella singing and the band crystallised around their shared musical passions and longstanding friendships. ‘The Oxford Student’ dubbed them “an enthralling blend of impressive vocal harmonies complimented with rich instrumentation”…”

 
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Full dates:

  • Campfire Club: Kaia Kater + John McGrath – Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton Street, Shoreditch, London, E1 5AR, England, Friday 3rd August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Cath & Phil Tyler + Marisa Jack & Davy – (secret location t.b.c.), London, Friday 3rd August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Get Cape Wear Cape Fly (solo unplugged) + Felix M-B – The Calthorpe Project, 258-274 Gray’s Inn Road, St Pancras, London, WC1X 8LH, England, Thursday 9th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
  • Campfire Club: Fellow Pynins + Jack & The Arrows – Oasis Nature Garden, Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, London, SW4 6RJ, England, Friday 10th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

More August Campfire Club concerts shortly….
 

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